Fine-grained bit-rate control

ABSTRACT

A system implements rate control for encoding and decoding operations, for example, operations performed on slices of data such as image data. The system implements fine-grained bit rate control allowing for non-integer bit rates to be specified for the system. The non-integer values may allow the system to more accurately characterize a data rate of a communication link between a source and sink. The more accurate characterization may facilitate improved utilization of the communication link capacity.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation-in-part of and claims priority to patent application Ser. No. 14/044,627, filed 2 Oct. 2013 which claims priority to provisional application Ser. No. 61/709,316, filed 3 Oct. 2012, each of which is entirely incorporated herein by reference. This application also claims priority to provisional application Ser. No. 61/764,807 filed 14 Feb. 2013, provisional application Ser. No. 61/764,772, filed 14 Feb. 2013, provisional application Ser. No. 61/764,891, filed 14 Feb. 2013, provisional application No. 61/770,979, filed 28 Feb. 2013, provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/810,126, filed 9 Apr. 2013, provisional application Ser. No. 61/820,967, filed 8 May 2013, provisional application Ser. No. 61/832,547, filed 7 Jun. 2013 and provisional application Ser. No. 61/856,302, filed 19 Jul. 2013 each of which is entirely incorporated herein by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates to image processing. This disclosure also relates to compression and decompression techniques for image transmission and display.

BACKGROUND

Immense customer demand has driven rapid advances in display technologies, image analysis algorithms, and communication technologies, as well as the widespread adoption of sophisticated image display devices. As just a few examples, these devices range from DVD and Blu-ray players that drive high resolution displays for home theaters, to the now ubiquitous smart phones and tablet computers that also have very high resolution displays. Improvements in image processing techniques will continue to expand the capabilities of these devices.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows an example architecture in which a source communicates encoded data to a sink.

FIG. 2 is an example of an encoder.

FIG. 3 shows a parallel processing architecture.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a predictor and quantizer.

FIG. 5 shows example sample locations.

FIG. 6 shows examples of a coded format for compressed samples.

FIG. 7 shows an example of a virtual buffer model.

FIG. 8 shows an example decoder.

FIG. 9 shows example logic for encoding.

FIG. 10 shows example logic for decoding.

FIG. 11 shows an example encoding and decoding system.

FIG. 12 shows an example of a picture and a picture parameter set.

FIG. 13 shows another example of an encoder.

FIG. 14 shows another example of a decoder.

FIG. 15 illustrates samples sets for block search.

FIG. 16 illustrates an example of indexed color history.

FIG. 17 shows an example of a portion of a slice using substream multiplexing.

FIG. 18 shows an example of substream demultiplexing logic.

FIG. 19 shows an example of substream multiplexing logic.

FIG. 20 shows an example of slice timing and delays.

FIG. 21 shows an example of 3×1 partial SADs that form 9×1 SAD.

FIG. 22 shows an example of original pixels used for encoder flatness checks.

FIG. 23 shows example block search sample sets.

FIG. 24 shows an example of logic that a system may implement for display stream compression.

FIG. 25 shows an example decoder system for adjusting quantization.

FIG. 26 shows example pixel values available for a decoder to determine flatness.

FIG. 27 shows an example encoder system for adjusting quantization.

FIG. 28 shows example logic for generating an indication based on image flatness.

FIG. 29 shows an example architecture in which a source communicates encoded data to a sink.

FIG. 30 is an example of a video encoder.

FIG. 31 shows an example of a virtual buffer.

FIG. 32 shows example logic for fine-grained bit rate control.

FIG. 33 shows example fractional bit rate logic.

FIG. 34 shows example logic for fine-grained bit rate control.

FIG. 35 shows example logic for including adjustment bits within the budget.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 shows an example architecture 100 in which a source 150 communicates with a sink 152 through a communication link 154. The source 150 or sink 152 may be present in any device that manipulates image data, such as a DVD or Blu-ray player, a smartphone, a tablet computer, or any other device. The source 150 may include an encoder 104 that maintains a virtual buffer 114. The sink 152 may include a decoder 106, memory 108, and display 110. The encoder 104 receives source data 112 (e.g., source image data) and may maintain the virtual buffer 114 of predetermined capacity to model or simulate a physical buffer that temporarily stores compressed output data. The encoder 104 may also evaluate the encoded symbols for transmission at a predetermined bit rate. The encoder 104 may specify the bit rate, as just two examples, in units of bits per pixel, or in units of bits per unit of time.

The encoder 104 may determine the bit rate, for example, by maintaining a cumulative count of the number of bits that are used for encoding minus the number of bits that are output. While the encoder 104 may use a virtual buffer 114 to model the buffering of data prior to transmission of the encoded data 116 to the memory 108, the predetermined capacity of the virtual buffer and the output bit rate do not necessarily have to be equal to the actual capacity of any buffer in the encoder or the actual output bit rate. Further, the encoder 104 may adjust a quantization step for encoding responsive to the fullness or emptiness of the virtual buffer. Buffer fullness is a metric that may apply to any buffer including rate buffers (e.g., physical memory, and/or other buffers), virtual buffers, and buffer models. An exemplary encoder 104 and operation of the encoder 104 are described below.

The decoder 106 may obtain the encoded data 116 from the memory 108. Further, the decoder 106 may determine the predetermined virtual buffer capacity and bit rate, and may determine the quantization step that the encoder 104 employed for encoding the encoded data 116. As the decoder 106 decodes the encoded data 116, the decoder 106 may also determine the fullness or emptiness of the virtual buffer 114 and adjust the quantization step used for decoding. That is, the decoder 106 may track the operation of the encoder 104 and determine the quantization step that the encoder 104 used. The decoder 106 decodes the encoded data 116 and provides video data 118 to a display 110. In some implementations, the quantization step is not present in the encoded data 116, saving significant bandwidth. Examples of decoders 106 and encoders 104, and their operation are described below.

The memory 108 may be implemented as Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), Dynamic RAM (DRAM), a solid state drive (SSD), hard disk, or other type of memory. The communication link 154 may be a wireless or wired connection, or combinations of wired and wireless connections. The encoder 104, decoder 106, memory 108, and display 110 may all be present in a single device (e.g., a smartphone). Alternatively, any subset of the encoder 104, decoder 106, memory 108, and display 110 may be present in a given device. For example, a Blu-ray player may include the decoder 106 and memory 108, and the display 110 may be a separate display in communication with the Blu-ray player.

FIG. 2 shows an example of an encoder 200. The encoder 200 encodes the video data 202. The video data 202 may take the form of a series of successive frames 202-0, . . . , 202-x, for example. The frames 202-0, . . . , 202-x may take the form of 2-dimensional matrices of pixel components, which may be represented in any color space such as the Red/Green/Blue (RGB), YUV, Luminance Y/Chroma Blue Cb/Chroma Red Cr (YCbCr), Luminance Y/Chroma Orange/Chroma Green (YCoCg), Alpha, Red, Green, Blue (ARGB), or other color space. Each of the pixel components may correspond to a spatial location. While the matrices may be overlaid to form a picture, each of the pixel components in the matrices are not necessarily co-located with pixel components in other matrices.

Each pixel component may be encoded with a value comprising a predetermined number of bits, such as eight, ten, or twelve bits per pixel component. The encoding may employ, as examples, 10 bit YCbCr 4:2:2, 8 bit YCbCr 4:2:2, 10 bit YCbCr 4:4:4, 8 bit YCbCr 4:4:4, 8 bit ARGB 32, or 8 bit RGB 24 encoding. The encoder 200 may receive the pixel components of the frames in raster scan order: left to right, top to bottom. In certain implementations, the video encoder 200 may receive the pixel components at a predetermined rate. The predetermined rate may correspond to the real-time frames per second display rate.

The video encoder 200 may include an input, predictor & quantizer 204, a mapping and variable length coder (VLC) 206, rate controller 208, a rate buffer 210, and memory (e.g., DRAM) 212. The video encoder 200 receives and encodes the pixel components. While the number of bits representing pixel components coming into the video encoder 200 may be constant (per pixel component), the number of bits representing each coded pixel may vary dramatically. The encoder 200 may increase the number of bits representing coded pixels by reducing the quantization step, or decrease the number of bits by increasing the quantization step.

The input, predictor & quantizer 204 predicts and quantizes the pixel components, resulting in quantized residuals. In certain implementations, the input, predictor, & quantizer 204 may predict a pixel component from previously encoded and reconstructed pixel components in the same frame, e.g., 202-0. The mapper and variable length coder 206 codes the quantized residuals, resulting in coded bits.

The input, predictor & quantizer 204 may use a predetermined initial quantization step for quantizing a predetermined amount of data, such as video pixel data. The mapping and variable length coder 206 signals the rate controller 208, which in turn instructs the input, predictor & quantizer 204 to increment, decrement, or leave unchanged the quantization parameter, as will be described in more detail below.

The mapping and variable length coder 206 may code the quantized sample values using their natural 2's complement binary values. The number of bits that the mapping and variable length coder 206 uses to code each value may be determined dynamically by a combination of recent history of coded values of the same pixel component and a prefix value associated with each unit of samples.

The rate controller 208 determines whether to increment, decrement, or leave unchanged the quantization step. The rate controller 208 may perform the quantization step analysis, e.g., by simulating or modeling a buffer of predetermined capacity that it evaluates at a predetermined bit rate. The modeled buffer may be referred to as a virtual buffer. If the virtual buffer is becoming full, the rate controller 208 may increase or increment the quantization step. If the virtual buffer is becoming empty, the rate controller 2098 may decrease or decrement the quantization step. Further implementations are described below with respect to rate control for slices.

The rate controller 208 may determine the fullness of the virtual buffer by, e.g., counting the bits that are used to encode the input received over a given number of input samples and subtracting the product of the predetermined bit rate, in bits per sample, and the number of input samples. The number of input samples may be as few as one sample.

A decoder may decode the encoded data starting with the initial quantization step. As the decoder decodes the encoded data, the decoder may also determine the fullness of the virtual buffer. The decoder may determine the fullness or emptiness by observing the amount of bits that were used to encode an amount of decoded data corresponding to the number of input samples. The decoder may then determine the quantization step decision that was made at the encoder 200. Accordingly, the encoder 200 does not need to explicitly transmit the quantization step to the rate controller or any other logic in the decoder.

FIG. 3 shows a parallel processing architecture 300. The demultiplexer 302 receives the input pixel components 304, and separates each pixel component into constituent parts, e.g., Alpha 306, Red 308, Green 310, and Blue 312. The prediction & quantization blocks 314, 316, 318, and 320 are associated with a particular one of the constituent parts of the pixel components. There may be any number of such blocks and they may operate in parallel. In the case of a format with four pixel components, such as ARGB, each prediction & quantization block processes a particular component part. When the architecture 300 processes pixel components with fewer constituent parts than prediction & quantization blocks, then some of the prediction & quantization blocks need not operate for the processing of those pixel components. The prediction & quantization blocks 314-320 may provide quantized residuals to a particular one of component mappers 322, 324, 326, and 328. The component mappers 322-328 may also operate in parallel.

The mappers 322-328 provide mapped quantized residuals ‘E’ to a multiplexer 330. The multiplexer 330 multiplexes the mapped quantized residuals ‘E’ into a residual stream 332 that is provided to the variable length coder 334. Alternatively, there may be a variable length encoder associated with each component mapper, and the multiplexer 330 may multiplex the variable length encoded quantized residuals output by the multiple variable length encoders.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a predictor and quantizer 400. The predictor and quantizer 400 includes a buffer 402, first delay logic 404 (implementing, e.g., six sample delay), a prediction engine 406, and second delay logic 408 (implementing, e.g., 3 sample delay). The buffer 402 may store the previous reconstructed image line. The prediction engine 406 receives the current pixel component ‘x’, reconstructed pixel components ‘w’, ‘t’, ‘s’, ‘g’, ‘c’, ‘b’, ‘d’, and ‘h’ from the previous line from the first delay blocks 404, and reconstructed pixels from the left on the current line, ‘k’, ‘r’, ‘f’, ‘a’ from the second delay blocks 408.

In order to use reconstructed pixel components, instead of the input pixel components, the quantizer 410 may provide quantized residuals E′ to an inverse quantizer 412. The inverse quantizer 412 inverse quantizes the quantized residuals. The reconstructed pixels ‘Rx’ are generated from the quantized residuals E′ and the predicted values from the prediction engine.

The prediction engine 406 may include an Edge prediction engine 414, LS prediction engine 416, Left prediction engine 418, and ABCD prediction engine 420. As described above, the prediction engine 406 predicts the current pixel component ‘x’ from reconstructed pixel components ‘w’, ‘t’, ‘s’, ‘g’, ‘c’, ‘b’, ‘d’, and ‘h’ from the previous line, and reconstructed pixels from the left on the current line, ‘k’, ‘r’, ‘f’, ‘a’, thereby resulting in a residual E″ representing the pixel component ‘x’.

The operation of the prediction engine 406 will now be described with reference to FIG. 5, which shows example pixel components 500. The prediction engine 406 may adaptively predict pixel components from neighboring reconstructed pixels of the line above, and the left pixels of the same line of the pixel to be predicted. For example, the prediction engine 406 may predict pixel ‘x’ from a combination of any of the reconstructed pixels ‘t’, ‘s’, ‘g’, ‘c’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘h’, ‘k’, ‘r’, ‘f’, and ‘a’.

The spatial prediction adaptively chooses an output from one of the four candidate prediction engines: the Edge prediction engine 414, LS prediction engine 416, Left prediction engine 418, and ABCD prediction engine 420 as its predictor for the current pixel component. The choice may be made according to the prediction errors determined for one or more previous reconstructed pixel components, considering the candidate predictors. This operation may be the same in both the encoder and decoder, and no prediction control information needs to be included in the encoded data. The decoder may implement an identical prediction mode algorithm and deduce the prediction mode used by the encoder. Once a predictor is selected, the value of each sample is predicted using the selected predictor. The residual value E″ is calculated as the difference between the predicted value and the actual sample value.

LS Prediction Engine 416

The LS prediction engine 416 may produce a predicted value Px of the current sample ‘x’ according to the following:

if (c >= max(a, b))    Px = min(a, b); else {    if (c <= min(a, b))       Px = max(a, b);    else Px = a + b − c;}

ABCD Prediction Engine 420.

The ABCD prediction engine 420 may produce the prediction value Px=(a+b+c+d+2)/4. This is an average of four neighboring samples.

Left Prediction Engine 418

The Left prediction engine 418 may use the reconstructed value of the left pixel of the current sample as its prediction value. In other words, Px=‘a’.

Edge Prediction Engine 414

The Edge prediction engine 414 may employ more neighboring pixels than the LS prediction engine 416. The Edge prediction engine 414 may detect an edge at several possible angles around the current sample ‘x’, and use the edge information in the prediction. The Edge prediction engine 414 may search, as examples, for directions of an edge that are horizontal, vertical, 45 degree, 135 degree, about 22.5 degrees and about 157.5 degrees. The Edge prediction engine 414 may be implemented in two stages. The first stage is edge detection. The second stage is edge selection.

Some options may be specified for the prediction function. The use of the reconstructed sample value ‘a’, which is immediately to the left of ‘x’, may be disabled by configuring the Edge prediction engine 414 with a parameter such as NOLEFT=1. Avoiding the use of sample ‘a’ may allow more time for the prediction, quantization and inverse quantization path to function, which may be an advantage in high throughput systems where circuit timing may make it difficult to reconstruct sample ‘a’ quickly. The use of the reconstructed sample values ‘a’ and T, which are the two samples immediately to the left of ‘x’, may be disabled by configuring the Edge prediction engine 414 with a parameter such as NOLEFT=2 (also referred to as NO2LEFT). This allows even more time for the prediction, quantization and inverse quantization path to function. When circuit timing needs three clock cycles for prediction, quantization and inverse quantization, the use of NOLEFT=2 facilitates a throughput of one sample per clock.

The individual prediction engines from the four listed above may be selectively enabled and disabled. For certain classes of content, better performance may be obtained by utilizing a subset of the prediction functions. When predicting samples along the top and left edges of an image, for example, the Left prediction engine 418 may be employed, as specified below.

NOLEFT=1 Option

When NOLEFT=1, the reconstructed sample value ‘a’ in the LS prediction engine 416, left prediction engine 418, and ABCD prediction engine 420 is replaced by its prediction Pa using the reconstructed samples ‘f’, ‘g’, and ‘c’ according to the following:

if (ABS(g−c) > ABS(g−f)*3)    Pa = c; else {    if (ABS(g−f) > ABS(g−c)*3)       Pa = f;    else Pa = (f+c+1)/2;}

NOLEFT=2 Option

When NOLEFT=2, the reconstructed sample values ‘f’and ‘a’ in the LS prediction engine 416, left prediction engine 418, and ABCD prediction engine 420 are replaced by their predictions Pf and Pa using the reconstructed samples ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘g’, and ‘c’. The prediction of ‘a’ may use the same approach as in NOLEFT, except that T is replaced by Pf according to the following: Pf=(r+g+s+c+2)/4;

Edge Prediction Engine with NOLEFT=0, NOLEFT=1, NOLEFT=2

When NOLEFT=0, the left sample is used in the prediction, and the following may be applied to the edge detection:

   if ( (2*ABS(a−c) > 6*ABS(c−b)) && 2*ABS(a−c) > 6*ABS(c−g) && 2*ABS(a−c) > 6*ABS(a−f) )    {       edge1 = 0;       strength1 = ABS(c−b);    }   else if ( 2*ABS(b−c) > 6*ABS(c−a) && 2*ABS(c−d) > 6*ABS(c−a) )    {       edge1 = 1;       strength1 = ABS(c−a) ;    }    else    {       strength1 = max_strength;       edge1 = 7;    }    if ( 2* ABS(a−g) > 6*ABS(a−b) && 2* ABS(a−g) > 6*ABS(f−c) )    {       edge2 = 2;       strength2 = ABS(a−b);    }    else if( 2* ABS(a−b) > 6*ABS(a−g) && 2* ABS(a−b) >    6*ABS(s−f) )    {       edge2 = 3;       strength2 = ABS(a−g) ;    }    else    {       strength2 = max_strength;       edge2 = 7;    }   if ( 2*ABS(a−g) > 6*ABS(a−d) )   {       edge3 = 4;       strength3 = ABS(a−d) ;    }    else if ( 2*ABS(a−b) > 6*ABS(a−s) )    {       edge3 = 5;       strength3 = ABS(a−s) ;    }    else    {       strength3 = max_strength;       edge3 = 7;    }

When NOLEFT=1, the left sample is not used in the prediction, and the following may be applied to the edge detection:

   if ( (2*ABS(f−g) > 6*ABS(c−g)) && 2*ABS(f−g) > 6*ABS(s−g) && 2*ABS(f−g) > 6*ABS(r−f) )    {       edge1 = 0;       strength1 = ABS(c−g);    }   else if ( 2*ABS(g−c) > 6*ABS(f−g) && 2*ABS(b−g) > 6*ABS(g−f) )    {       edge1 = 1;       strength1 = ABS(f−g);    }    else    {       strength1 = max_strength;       edge1 = 7;       }    if ( 2* ABS(f−s) > 6*ABS(f−c) && 2* ABS(f−s) > 6*ABS(r−g) )    {       edge2 = 2;       strength2 = ABS(f−c);    }    else if ( 2* ABS(f−c) > 6*ABS(s−f) && 2* ABS(f−c) >    6*ABS(r−t) )    {       edge2 = 3;       strength2 = ABS(s−f);    }    else    {       strength2 = max_strength;       edge2 = 7;    }   if ( 2*ABS(s−f) > 6*ABS(f−b) )   {       edge3 = 4;       strength3 = ABS(f−b);    }    else if ( 2*ABS(f−c) > 6*ABS(f−t) )    {       edge3 = 5;       strength3 = ABS(f−t);    }    else    {       strength3 = max_strength;       edge3 = 7;    }

When NOLEFT=2, the two left samples are not used in the prediction, and the following may be applied to the edge detection:

   if ( (2*ABS(r−s) > 6*ABS(g−s)) && 2*ABS(r−s) > 6*ABS(t−s) && 2*ABS(r−s) > 6*ABS(k−r) )    {       edge1 = 0;       strength1 = ABS(g−s);    }   else if ( 2*ABS(s−g) > 6*ABS(r−s) && 2*ABS(c−s) > 6*ABS(s−r) )    {       edge1 = 1;       strength1 = ABS(r−s);    }    else    {       strength1 = max_strength;       edge1 = 7;    }    if ( 2* ABS(r−t) > 6*ABS(r−g) && 2* ABS(r−t) > 6*ABS(k−s) )    {       edge2 = 2;       strength2 = ABS(r−g);    }    else if ( 2* ABS(r−g) > 6*ABS(t−r) && 2* ABS(r−g) >    6*ABS(k−w) )    {       edge2 = 3;       strength2 = ABS(t−r);    }    else    {       strength2 = max_strength;       edge2 = 7;    }   if ( 2*ABS(t−r) > 6*ABS(r−c) )   {       edge3 = 4;       strength3 = ABS(r−c);    }    else if ( 2*ABS(r−g) > 6*ABS(r−w) )    {       edge3 = 5;       strength3 = ABS(r−w);    }    else    {       strength3 = max_strength;       edge3 = 7;    }

The parameter ‘max_strength’ may be defined as the largest possible absolute difference between two samples. This parameter may be related to the pixel data format, e.g., for 8-bit data, max_strength=255, for 10-bit data, max_strength=1023. The same edge selection logic may be applied in each case of NOLEFT=0, NOLEFT=1 and NOLEFT=2, except that the sample value ‘a’ may be replaced by its prediction Pa when NOLEFT=1 or NOLEFT=2, and the sample value ‘f’ may be replaced by its prediction Pf when NOLEFT=2:

  if (strength1 <= strength2)   {      if (strength1 <= strength3)      {         edge = edge1;         strength = strength1;      }      else      {         edge = edge3;         strength = strength3;      }   }   else   {      if (strength2 <= strength3)      {         edge = edge2;         strength = strength2;      }      else      {         edge = edge3;         strength = strength3;      }   }   if (strength == max_strength || edge == 7)      Px = (a+c+b+d+2) / 4; else   {      switch(edge)      {      case 0: Px = a;      case 1: Px = b;      case 2: Px = d;      case 3: Px = c;      case 4: Px = h;      case 5: Px = g;      }   }

Predictor Selection

A Unit may be considered to be a logical grouping of adjacent samples of the same component. For example, the Unit size may be selected to be equal to two. A Unit size may be the number of samples comprised by a Unit. In alternative implementations, the Unit size may be selected to have a value of one, three, four or another value. In one embodiment, when the Unit size is selected to be equal to two, for every pair of samples of one component, a selected set (up to all) of the candidate predictors may be evaluated using the previous pair of samples of the same component, and the predictor that performs best for that previous pair is selected for the current pair. The selection of a predictor may be made on boundaries that do not align with Units. There may be certain exceptions under which the set of candidate predictors is restricted, for example when samples to the left or above are not available, or for example when one or more predictors are not enabled.

For the first pair of samples of the image, e.g., the two samples on the left edge of the top line, the left prediction engine 418 may be selected as the predictor. Further, for the first pair of samples of each line other than the first, the LS prediction engine 416 may be selected. Sample values that are not available for use in prediction may be assigned a pre-determined value, for example one half of the maximum range of sample values.

For other pairs of samples, the predictor may be selected according to the estimated prediction errors of the left pair of samples, which may be calculated by all four predictors. When the reconstructed value of the current sample ‘x’ is found, the estimated prediction error for the current sample can be calculated as follows: err_sample=ABS(x′−Px)

In the above equation, Px is the predicted value of the current sample from each of the four predictors. The prediction error of one predictor is the sum of err_sample over both samples in a pair of samples for a predictor. The predictor with the smallest prediction error is then selected as the predictor for the next pair of samples of the same component.

Note when NOLEFT=1, the prediction error of the left sample is not available. Assuming the current sample is ‘x’ in FIG. 5, then if NOLEFT=0, the prediction engine selected by the left pair, the samples of ‘f’ and ‘a’, is used for the current sample pair. If NOLEFT=1, the predictor selected by the smallest prediction error of the available left pair may be used, e.g., the samples of ‘r’ and ‘f’ if ‘x’ is the second sample of the pair, or samples of ‘r’ and ‘k’ is ‘x’ is the first sample of the pair. If NOLEFT=2, the predictor selected by the smallest prediction error of the samples of ‘r’ and ‘k’ may be used if ‘x’ is the first sample of the pair, or samples of ‘k’ and its immediately left one if ‘x’ is the second sample of the pair. The residual or error value E″ may be determined as: E″=x−Px.

The reconstructed sample value of ‘x’, for use in future predictions, may be obtained as follows:

x′ = Px + E′ * QuantDivisor; if (x′ < 0) x′ = 0; else if (x′ > MAXVAL) x′ = MAXVAL;

The value QuantDivisor is defined below. MAXVAL is the maximum value that can be coded by the uncompressed video sample word size, e.g., 1023 for 10 bit video, and 255 for 8 bit video. In one implementation, Cb and Cr are non-negative integers.

The operation of the mapper and variable length coder 206 is described with reference to FIG. 6, which shows examples of sample units 600, which are also referred to as Units. The mapper and variable length coder 206 may use entropy coding to code sample values using their natural 2's complement binary values. The number of bits used to code each value may be determined dynamically by a combination of the recent history of coded values of the same component and a prefix value associated with each Unit 605 of samples. In certain implementations, a Unit 605 comprises two samples 610 of a particular component type, e.g., Y, Cb or Cr, or Alpha, R, G or B. In some implementations, the Cb and Cr samples are coded together in one Unit. The same set of components may be used for the prediction of the number of bits.

Each Unit 605 of samples has a Unit sample size. A Unit sample size may be the size in bits of each of the samples in a Unit. The Unit 605 sample size may be large enough to code each of the samples contained in the Unit 505, and it may be larger. The size of one sample may be the number of bits used to code the sample's value in 2's complement. For example, a value of 0 has a size of 0, a value of −1 has a size of 1, a value of −2 or 1 has a size of 2, a value of −4, −3, 2 or 3 has a size of 3, and so on.

A Unit 605, may have a maximum sample size, which is the maximum of the sizes of all the samples in the Unit 605. A Unit 605 may also have a predicted size. In one implementation, if the predicted size is greater than or equal to the maximum sample size, then the Unit 605 sample size is equal to the predicted size. In one implementation, if the maximum sample size is greater than the predicted size, then the difference, which is always non-negative, is coded in the prefix value 612, and the maximum sample size may be used as the Unit 605 sample size. In another implementation, if the maximum sample size is different from the predicted size, then the difference, which may be positive or negative, is coded in the prefix value 612. The prefix value may use unary coding, e.g., for implementations with non-negative prefix values, the value 0 has the code 1 (binary), the value 1 has the code 01, the value 2 has the code 001, and so on. The Unit sample size is the sum of the predicted size and the prefix value 612. For 10 bit video, the greatest possible sample size is 10, and the smallest possible predicted size is 0, so the greatest possible prefix value is 10, which occupies 11 bits i.e. 0000 0000 001. For implementations with signed prefix values, signed prefix values may be unary coded.

The predicted size may be a function of the sizes of previously coded samples. In one implementation, the predicted size is the average, with rounding, of the sizes of the samples of the same component of the previous two samples, e.g., of the previous Unit, given that the Unit size is 2. If the Unit size is 4, the predicted size may be the average of the sizes of the four samples of the same component of the previous Unit. If the Unit size is 3, the predicted size may be generated by the average of the sizes of the last two samples of the same component of the previous Unit, thereby avoiding division by 3. Alternatively, if the Unit size is 3, the predicted size may be generated as a weighted sum of 3 samples of the previous unit of the same component. The weights may be, for example, (¼, ¼, ½).

For example, if a component of an image, after quantization, is such that the size of the samples is 2 for many consecutive samples, then the predicted size is 2, and the prefix value is 0. Therefore the prefix code is ‘1’, and each sample is coded using 2 bits, and a Unit of two samples has a total of 5 bits. In the event of a transient causing a sudden increase in the sample size, the prefix value codes the increase in the sizes. In the event of another transient causing a sudden decrease in the sample size, the prefix value may be 0 and the Unit sample size may be equal to the predicted size, which may be in excess of the sizes of the samples in the Unit. Therefore each sample may be coded with a number of bits equal to the predicted size, even though their own sizes are less. Following a transient, in the absence of another change in sample sizes, the Unit sample size and predicted size converge again. This technique results in very efficient coding of samples, given that the sizes of the samples may change from Unit to Unit, particularly when the sizes do not frequently change very rapidly.

The delta size Unit variable length coding (DSU-VLC) scheme facilitates efficient encoding and decoding at high speed in hardware, in part because it does not rely upon VLC tables. The number of bits in a Unit to be decoded is determined from the prefix value (counting zeros) and the predicted size, which can be determined before encoding or decoding the current Unit. It is feasible to encode or decode one Unit per clock, and faster decoding approaches are also feasible. Encoding can encode multiple Units in parallel, for greater throughput. The Unit size may be selected to be greater than two for various reasons. For example, larger Unit size may be chosen where the usage imposes a throughput requirement that cannot practically be met with a Unit size of 2, in which case a Unit size of 3 or 4 may be used.

Referring again to FIG. 4, the quantizer 410 quantizes the residuals E″, which in general includes the case of lossless coding, using a quantization parameter Quant. Quant may take on values ranging from 0, signifying lossless, to the value that corresponds to the highest value of QuantDivisor[ ] (see below). With an exemplary set of values of QuantDivisor and QuantOffset shown below, the value of Quant ranges from 0 to 17.

The quantizer 410 may perform quantization on the residual value E″ as follows:

if (Quant = 0)    E′ = E″; else    if (E″ >= 0)      E′ = (E″ + QuantOffset[Quant]) / QuantDivisor[Quant];    else E′ = (E″ − QuantOffset[Quant]) / QuantDivisor[Quant];

where division may be with truncation, as, e.g., in the ‘C’ language.

The set of divisors may be:

int QuantDivisor[ ]={1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 28, 32, 48, 64, 128, 256};

The associated set of offsets, the rounding constants, may be:

int QuantOffset[ ]={0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 23, 31, 63, 127};

In this approach, there are 4 odd-valued divisors (3, 5, 7 and 9), and seven that are products of one of these odd-valued divisors and one of five other values, each of which is a power of 2:2**N. As a result, in one implementation, the quantization function supports 4 odd-valued divisors.

The use of this particular set of values of QuantDivisor[ ] provides good compression with low complexity. Note that division by the odd numbers can be performed in hardware using multiplication by one of a small set of optimized constant values.

In other implementations, the divisors may be selected such that they do not have odd factors. For example:

int QuantDivisor[ ]={1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096};

int QuantOffset[ ]={0, 0, 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, 63, 127, 255, 511, 1023, 2047};

Rate Control

The value of Quant is determined via a rate control technique, which may be performed identically in both the encoder and decoder. The rate control technique may base its decisions on a measure of the activity of the most recently coded predetermined number of pixel components and on the fullness of the buffer model. The predetermined number may be, for example, 3, 2, or some other number. The value of Quant may be updated once per coded predetermined number of pixel components.

FIG. 7 shows an example of a virtual buffer model 700. The virtual buffer model 700 is in communication with a bitstream source 702, the rate controller 208, and a bitstream consumer 706. The virtual buffer model 700 models the behavior of a rate buffer where the output bit rate is a specified bit rate. The specified bit rate may be in units of bits per pixel or per group of pixels, or it may be in other units such as bits per unit of time, such as bits per second. The bitstream consumer 706 may model the consumption of bits at a specified rate. The bitstream source 702 may be the output of the mapper and variable length coder 206, for example. A group of pixels may comprise a predetermined number of pixels, for example two, three, four, or some other number.

Bits enter the virtual buffer model 700 when they are created. For example, the number of bits used to code a Group is added to the model 700 when the Group is coded. Bits leave the virtual buffer model 700 according to a pre-determined schedule. For example, the schedule may specify a constant rate in units of bits per group. The virtual buffer model 700 may be implemented as an accumulator 708, in which one value is added and other value is subtracted per Group. Alternatively, the schedule of removing bits from the virtual buffer model 700 may be in units of bits per second. Alternatively, the times at which bits are added to or subtracted from the buffer model 700 may be finer or coarser than a Group, and may use a construct other than a Group, such as a sample, a macroblock, a slice or a picture. In order to model the behavior of a First In First Out (FIFO) buffer, the fullness of the virtual buffer model 700 may be clamped to 0 when subtracting a number of bits from the fullness that would otherwise result in a negative value of fullness.

When the output bit rate used in the virtual buffer model 700 is less than or equal to the actual bit rate at which bits are removed from the rate buffer in an encoder, and the rate controller 704 ensures that the virtual buffer model 700 does not overflow, the rate buffer also does not overflow. More generally, the encoder may use the virtual buffer model 700 to manage the rate of creation of bits by the encoder such that another virtual buffer model, which may be applied later to the encoder's bit stream, does not overflow or underflow. The bit rate at which bits leave the virtual buffer model can be changed at any time to any supported value. If the actual rate at which bits leave the rate buffer equals or approximates the rate at which bits leave the virtual buffer model, the encoder's bit rate can be set to any supported bit rate with effectively instantaneous response. Because the rate control uses the virtual buffer model to manage the rate of creation of bits, the rate control function does not need to monitor the rate at which bits leave the rate buffer.

In one implementation, the encoder and decoder perform identical rate control (RC) decisions, which control the value of the quantizer, or Quant, without the encoder transmitting any bits that specifically indicate quantization control. The rate control may depend on the activity, measured by the sizes of the samples, of the previous Group, as well as fullness of the virtual buffer model, and a measure of the strength of an edge, if any, in the preceding samples. The rate control may use several configurable thresholds. Units 605 are organized into Groups 710. Groups 710 are utilized to organize the samples to facilitate the buffer model and rate control. In another exemplary implementation, the decoder does not perform the same rate control decisions as the encoder, and the encoder transmits bits which indicate at least a portion of the quantization control.

In one implementation, the encoder, including the rate controller 208, ensures that the virtual buffer model 700 never exceeds a defined maximum fullness, while choosing quantization levels to maximize overall subjective image quality. For some images and bit rates, both may be achieved relatively easily, while for others, the buffer fullness may vary and approach or reach the size of the virtual buffer model 700 at times and the quantization may vary and may reach the maximum allowed value at times.

The virtual buffer model 700 may represent a FIFO of predetermined size, BufferSize. The value of BufferSize may be chosen according to the particular application. A larger size generally facilitates better compression for a given bit rate and image contents, and vice versa. A larger size also implies a larger amount of space available in a physical rate buffer, as well as potentially increased latency. In an exemplary implementation, at the start of a picture, the buffer model 700 is initialized to be empty. Alternatively, the virtual buffer model 700 fullness may be retained from one picture to the next, or it may be initialized to some other value.

As each Group 710 of samples is encoded, the number of bits used to code the Group is added to the accumulator in the virtual buffer model 700. After each Group is coded, a number equal to the budget of bits per Group, e.g., the specified bit rate, is subtracted from the accumulator, with the result clamped to 0 to enforce non-negative fullness. In implementations where the decoder mimics the rate control of the encoder, the same operation happens in the decoder: as each Group is decoded, the number of bits that the Group occupies is added to the model and the specified bit rate, e.g., the budget number of bits per Group, is subtracted, with the result clamped to 0. This way the encoder and decoder buffer models track exactly for every Group in each picture. The rate controller 208 can guarantee that the buffer fullness never exceeds the defined maximum value, e.g., the buffer size, by adjusting the value of Quant.

In one implementation, at the start of each picture, the quantization value Quant is initialized to 0, corresponding to lossless coding. In another implementation, the value of Quant is initialized to a non-zero value. The value of Quant may be adjusted dynamically to avoid overflowing the buffer model while maximizing the compressed image quality. The rate control algorithm may facilitate encoding of difficult images at low bit rates with minimum visible quantization errors, as well as encoding difficult images at higher bit rates with no visible quantization error.

In one implementation, the activity level of each Group is measured. The activity level may be the maximum quantized residual size of each Unit in the Group, times the number of samples in a Unit (e.g., either 2, 3, or 4), plus 1 (corresponding to a prefix value of 0), summed over all of the Units in the Group. The quantized residual sizes are after quantization using the current value of Quant. As an example of 2 samples per unit and 3 units per group, the numbers of bits for sample 0 and 1 are SampleSize[0] and SampleSize[1] respectively. Assume the maximum of the two samples for unit 0 is MaxSizeUnit[0]=MAX(SampleSize[0], SampleSize[1]), then the activity level for the group is RcSizeGroup=MaxSizeUnit[0]+1+MaxSizeUnit[1]+1+MaxSizeUnit[2]+1. Another parameter that calculates the real number of bits coded in the last Group, e.g., BitsCodedCur, in example shown below, is also used in determining whether the value of Quant should be increased, decreased, or left unchanged.

The following describes control of the quantization parameter, Quant, for an example where the virtual buffer size is 16 Kbits. In this example, “MaxBitsPerGroup” represents the pre-determined data rate in bits per group. Offset[ ] is a set of values that adjust the “target_activity_level” according to the fullness of the buffer model, which is represented by “Buffer_fullness”, and which is compared to various threshold values represented by BufTh1, BufTh2, and so on:

// Set target number of bits per Group according to buffer fullness if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh1) {    Target_activity_level = MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[0];    MIN_QP = minQP[0];    MAX_QP = maxQP[0]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh2) {    Target_activity_level = MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[1];    MIN_QP = minQP[1];    MAX_QP = maxQP[1]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh3) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[2]));    MIN_QP = minQP[2];    MAX_QP = maxQP[2]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh4) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[3] ));    MIN_QP = minQP[3];    MAX_QP = maxQP[3]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh5) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[4] ));    MIN_QP = minQP[4];    MAX_QP = maxQP[4]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh6) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[5]));    MIN_QP = minQP[5];    MAX_QP = maxQP[5]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh7) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[6]));    MIN_QP = minQP[6];    MAX_QP = maxQP[6]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh8) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[7]));    MIN_QP = minQP[7];    MAX_QP = maxQP[7]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh9) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[8]));    MIN_QP = minQP[8];    MAX_QP = maxQP[8]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh10) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[9]));    MIN_QP = minQP[9];    MAX_QP = maxQP[9]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh11) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[10]));    MIN_QP = minQP[10];    MAX_QP = maxQP[10]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh12) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[11]));    MIN_QP = minQP[11];    MAX_QP = maxQP[12]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh13) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[12]));    MIN_QP = minQP[12];    MAX_QP = maxQP[12]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh14) {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[13]));    MIN_QP = minQP[13];    MAX_QP = maxQP[13]; } else {    Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[14]));    MIN_QP = minQP[14];    MAX_QP = maxQP[14]; }

The 14 values of threshold (BufTh1 through 14) of buffer fullness in units of bits may be set for a virtual buffer model size of 16 Kbits (16,384 bits) as {1792, 3584, 5376, 7168, 8960, 10752, 12544, 13440, 14336, 15232, 15456, 15680, 15960, 16240}. The 15 values of offsets (offset[0 to 14]) for Target_activity_level may be set as {20, 10, 0, −2, −4, −4, −8, −10, −10, −10, −10, −12, −12, −12, −12}.

At any range of buffer fullness, which is bounded by two consecutive thresholds, e.g., BufTh1<=Buffer_fullness<BufTh2, there is a range of Quant, specified by MIN_QP and MAX_QP, allowed for the rate controller 208 to use. This helps to regulate the variation of Quant to avoid over-quantization when the buffer level is low, as well as avoiding the use of too many less significant bits that may not help with visual quality when the buffer fullness is high. The pair of parameters, MIN_QP and MAX_QP, associated with each range of buffer fullness levels are selected respectively from an array of 15 values of min_QP[0 to 14], with example default values of {0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17}, and an array of 15 values of max_QP[0 to 14] with example default values of {2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17}, according to the buffer fullness level.

The value of Quant is adjusted according to the measured activity levels, the target activity level, the allowed Quant range specified by MIN_QP and MAX_QP, and the strength of a strong edge. When there is a strong edge, the activity level normally increases significantly if the value of Quant stays fixed. The rate control algorithm detects the presence of a strong edge by examining the activity level of the current Group and that of the preceding Group as well as the associated values of Quant. When a strong edge is detected, the rate control algorithm does not increase the value of Quant immediately after the presence of the strong edge, in order to avoid potential quantization noise that is more readily visible in smooth areas that may follow a strong edge. This factor may be observed for example in some cartoon content. The rate control may increase the value of Quant at the second group after a strong edge. One parameter that serves as a threshold in detecting strong edges is defined as EdgeFactor in the pseudo code below.

Some implementations avoid excessive fluctuation of Quant around a high quantization value, which could result in visible high frequency quantization noise in some images. These implementations regulate the increase of Quant so that Quant does not increase for two consecutive Groups of pixels when the value of Quant is already high, with certain exceptions. However, the decrease of Quant may be allowed as soon as the measured activity level is low. These adjustments are controlled by two parameters defined as QuantIncrLimit[0] and QuantIncrLimit[1] in the example below; their default values may be set to 11. In the following example, RcSizeGroup represents the activity level, BitsCodedCur represents the actual number of bits used to code the most recently coded Group, and RcTgtBitsGroup represents the Target_activity_level. RcTgtBitOffset[0] and RcTgtBitOffset[1] are offset values that adjust the range of the target activity level. EdgeFactor is a parameter that is used to detect a strong edge. The quantization step of the last Group is Quant, which is saved as QuantPrev before it is assigned the value for the current Group. The operation of the Quant adjustment may be implemented as follows:

if ( RcSizeGroup < (RcTgtBitsGroup − RcTgtBitOffset[0])  && BitsCodedCur < (RcTgtBitsGroup − RcTgtBitOffset[0])) {  QuantPrev = Quant;   Quant = MAX(MIN_QP, (Quant−1)); } else if (BitsCodedCur > RcTgtBitsGroup + RcTgtBitOffset[1]) {  if ((QuantPrev == Quant && RcSizeGroup * 2 < RcSizeGroupPrev * EdgeFactor) || (QuantPrev < Quant && RcSizeGroup < RcSizeGroupPrev * EdgeFactor && Quant < QuantIncrLimit[0]) || (Quant < QuantIncrLimit[1] ) )   {  QuantPrev = Quant;     Quant = MIN(MAX_QP, (Quant+1));} } else QuantPrev = Quant;

When the buffer fullness approaches the maximum allowed level, the above Quant value determined by the activity level may be replaced by max_QP:

if (Buffer_fullness >= BufTh_overflow_avoid)   *Quant = max_QP;

Where BufTh_overflow_avoid is a programmable parameter.

FIG. 8 shows an example decoder 800. The decoder 800 includes a rate buffer 802, a variable length decoder (VLD) 804, a predictor, mapper and inverse quantizer (PMIQ) 806, and a rate controller 808. The decoder 800 may be located in the same device or in a different device as the encoder, and may receive the bitstream input from any source, such as a memory or communication interface. For example, the decoder 800 may be located remotely from the encoder and receive the input bitstream via a network interface.

The rate buffer 802 may be a FIFO memory which temporarily stores compressed data bits after the encoder 800 receives them. The rate buffer 802 may be integrated with the rest of the video decoder or it may be located in another module, and it may be combined with another memory. The size of the rate buffer 802 may be at least as large as the virtual buffer used in the video encoder. For example, where the video encoder uses a 16 kbits virtual buffer, e.g., 2048 bytes, the rate buffer may be the same size, i.e., 2048 bytes or larger. Ready-accept flow control may be used between the rate buffer 802 and the VLD 804 to control that when the rate buffer 802 is empty the decoding operation is suspended until there is data available in the rate buffer 802.

The fullness of the rate buffer 802, at any given time, may not be the same as the fullness of the virtual buffer model. In part this is because the decoder virtual buffer model mimics the operation of the encoder virtual buffer model, and not the operation of the decoder, and the buffer model operates with the specified number of coded bits/pixel times the number of pixels in a Group being removed from the buffer model every time a Group is decoded, rather than the actual schedule at which bits arrive at the decoder. The transmission of compressed bits may be modeled as being exactly synchronized with the decompression function, while in actual operation the input of the rate buffer 802 may be read from memory more quickly or more slowly than exactly this rate. This is one reason that the rate control, above, operates on the buffer model and not on the rate buffer fullness.

The input to the VLD 804 is a compressed bit stream 812. The compressed bit stream 812 nay include a series of Groups. The Groups may include a set of Units. Each Unit may have a Prefix and some number of samples, for example two, three or four samples. The VLD 804 operation is the inverse of the variable length coder (VLC) 206 function. Since the input to the VLD 804 is a stream of bits, e.g., a stream of VLC coded samples, part or all of the VLD operation may be performed sequentially. Some of the VLD functionality may be pipelined, however.

In one implementation, the VLD 804 uses a Unit size of 2, i.e., 2 samples per Unit. The choice of Unit size may be the same for both the encoder and decoder for any given image. The Unit size is generally an attribute of the encoded bit stream.

The VLD 804 decoding operation entails determining the actual sizes (e.g., number of significant bits) of the samples in the previous Unit of the same component as the one currently being coded, and creating a predicted Unit sample size from this information. This analysis may be pipelined. The VLD 804 may decode the Prefix of each unit, which may be unary coded. The decoded Prefix value is added to the predicted sample size value. The resulting sample size information indicates how many bits for each sample are contained in the Unit. The VLD 804 extracts from the incoming bit stream a number of bits equal to the prefix size plus the determined sample size times the number of samples per Unit. Once the VLD 804 extracts these bits, they are de-multiplexed and processed by subsequent decoding steps which may be pipelined.

Similar to the VLC, the number of bits spent for the current Group as well as the activity level of the current Group are calculated and passed to the rate controller 808 for rate control. The VLD 804 generates the values of RcSizeGroup and BitsCodedCur and passes these to the rate controller 808.

Once the coded samples are extracted, they are converted to a suitable format for subsequent processing. For example, they may be converted to an 11 bit 2's complement signed format, with sign-extension of negative sample values. These constant-width sample values are demultiplexed into individual component streams of samples, and sent to the Predictor, Mapping and I-Quant (PMIQ) block 806.

FIG. 9 shows example logic 900 for encoding. The logic 900 initializes the quantization step to zero (902) and receives a unit of pixel components (904). The logic 900 also performs quantization using the quantization step and encodes the quantized values (906). The logic 900 measures the fullness of the virtual buffer (908) and adjusts the quantization step based on the measured fullness (910). If the encoding is finished (912), flow may return to (902) or terminate altogether; otherwise flow may continue at (904).

FIG. 10 shows example logic 1000 for decoding. The logic 1000 initializes the quantization step to zero (1002). The logic 1000 decodes a coded unit and updates the virtual buffer (1004). The logic 1000 also dequantizes using the quantization step parameter (1006), and measures the fullness of the virtual buffer (1008). Further, the logic 1000 may adjust the quantization step based on the measured fullness (1010). The logic 1000 determines whether decoding of the frame is finished (1012), and if so, flow may return to (1002) or terminate. Otherwise, the flow may return to (1004).

Operation Description

The description above provides an example architecture that supports additional specific image processing operations. An introduction to some of these operations is provided next. Additional architectural implementations that support the image processing operations are also discussed further below.

FIG. 11 shows an example encoding and decoding system 1100, based on the example of FIG. 1. The system 1100 supports real time operation. Source data 112, which may be uncompressed, enters the encoder 104, for example in real time and raster scan order. The encoder 104 compresses incoming pixels to form a bitstream and temporarily stores portions of the bitstream in its rate buffer 210. The output of the rate buffer 210 is the slice layer of a Display Stream Compression (DSC) bitstream 1106. The DSC bitstream 1106 may be conveyed, e.g., in real time from the encoder 104 to the decoder 106. In that regard, a wide variety of communication links 1104 may convey the DSC bitstream 1106 to the decoder 106. Underlying the communication links 1104 may be a wide variety of transport layers, and the communication links 1104 may include local high speed busses, WiFi links, Ethernet links, satellite links, cellular (e.g., 3G or 4G/LTE) links, as examples.

The decoder 106 receives the DSC bitstream 1106 into its rate buffer 802, which temporarily stores portions of the DSC bitstream 1106. The VLD 804 decodes bits from the rate buffer 802 to obtain uncompressed pixels. The VLD 804 outputs the uncompressed pixels, e.g., in real time and in raster scan order, for the display 110. The image output from the decoding process may have the same format as the image input to the encoding process.

The DSC bitstream may include of a sequence of frames coded using a picture layer syntax. The picture layer syntax may include a PPS (picture parameter set) and a slice syntax. The PPS contains parameters that the decoder 106 uses for correct decoding of the slice layer. FIG. 12 shows an example of a PPS 1200.

The picture layer may operate in units of entire pictures. A picture may be, as examples, a frame in the case of a progressive format video, or a field in the case of an interlaced format video. Each picture may include an integer number of contiguous, non-overlapping, identically-sized, rectangular slices. In the encoder 104, slice coding is specified via a slice layer. In the decoder 106, each slice may be decoded independently without reference to other slices. There may be one slice per line or multiple slices per line. In the case of multiple slices per line, bits from the slices covering one line are multiplexed in the DSC bitstream 1106 via a slice multiplexing process described below. Each slice may include a set of groups, and each group may be a set of three consecutive pixels in raster scan order. Further, the encoder 104 may encode each group with multiple (e.g., three) entropy codes, one for each component, and each of which may be a specific type of variable length code (VLC). Furthermore, some groups may include one or more additional bits which signal specific decoding operations.

FIG. 13 shows another example of an encoder 1300. The DSC encoding process generates bitstreams that may precisely conform to the independently specified bpp (bits per pixel) rate. The bpp rate may be specified in terms of bits per pixel time, which may be algorithmically specified, as the unit of a pixel time is the same at both the input and output of the encoder 1300. The number of bits that code each pixel, or group of pixels, may vary considerably. In the encoder 1300, the rate buffer 1302 facilitates converting the variable number of bits used to code each group into, e.g., a constant bpp rate. To that end, the encoding process includes the rate controller 1304.

The encoder 1300 may include color space conversion logic 1306, e.g., RGB input to reversible YCoCg conversion logic. An input buffer 1308 stores the converted input. Prediction, quantization, and reconstruction (PQR) logic 1310 implements prediction of sample values and generation of residual values. The prediction, quantization, and reconstruction (PQR) logic 1310 may include multiple (e.g., three) predictors: modified median adaptive prediction (MMAP), mid-point prediction (MPP), and block prediction (BP). The PQR logic 1310 also implements quantization of residual values and reconstruction of sample values. An indexed color history (ICH) 1312 is also present, as is VLC coding logic 1314 that may implement entropy coding using delta size unit variable-length coding (DSU-VLC). The input buffer 1308 provide samples to the flatness determination logic 1318. Note also that substream multiplexing logic 1320 is present to prepare a multiplexed output stream to the rate buffer 1302.

FIG. 14 shows another example of a decoder 1400 configured to decode image data that the encoder 1300 has encoded, and produce image output 1418. The decoder 1400 may implement the inverse of the operations that were performed by the encoder 1300. The decoder 1400 may include a rate buffer 1402, substream demultiplexer 1420, and VLC entropy decoding logic 1404 for DSU-VLC. The decoder 1400 also includes PQR logic 1406 that may implement multiple (e.g., three) predictors: modified median adaptive prediction (MMAP), mid-point prediction (MPP), and block prediction (BP). The PQR logic 1406 also performs inverse quantization of residual values and reconstruction of sample values. An ICH 1408, rate control logic 1410, and color space conversion logic 1412 is also present. Flatness indications may be signaled in the bitstream from the encoder, and provided to the rate control logic 1410.

The encoding process may produce display stream coded bitstreams that conform to an HRD (hypothetical reference decoder) constraint. The HRD may be idealized model of a decoder that includes a model of a rate buffer, which should neither overflow nor underflow.

The DSC bitstream and decoding process facilitate decoding 3 pixels per clock cycle in practical hardware implementations. In other implementations, the decoding process may process 1,3, or other numbers of pixels per clock. Additional throughput in terms of pixels per clock may be increased via encoding and decoding multiple slices in parallel, which is facilitated by utilizing multiple slices per line in the DSC bitstream.

Color Space Conversion Logic 1306, 1412

RGB video input to the encoding process may be converted to YCoCg for subsequent processing. The reversible form of YCoCg may be used, and as such the number of bits per each of the two chroma components is one greater in YCoCg than it is in RGB. In the case of YCbCr input, no color space conversion need be performed. The inverse color space conversion is performed in the decoding process.

PQR Logic 1319, 1406

Each group of pixels is coded using either predictive coding (P-mode) or indexed color history coding (ICH-mode). For P-mode there are three predictors: modified median-adaptive prediction (MMAP), block prediction (BP), and midpoint prediction (MPP). The encoder and decoder may select MMAP, BP, or MPP automatically, using the same algorithm in each, without signaling the selection in the DSC bitstream.

In the encoder 1300, each sample is predicted using the selected predictor. The original sample value is compared to the predicted value, and the difference is quantized. Each quantized error is then entropy-coded if P-mode is selected. The encoder 1300 also performs a reconstruction step wherein the inverse-quantized error is added to the prediction so that the encoder and decoder may use the same reference samples.

In decoder 1400, the samples are predicted using a selected predictor. The residual value, which is obtained from decoding the DSC bitstream, is inverse quantized and the result added to the prediction, forming the reconstructed sample value.

The median-adaptive predictor (MAP) may be the prediction method that is used in JPEG-LS. However, a modification is made to allow the decoder 1400 to process three pixels in a group in parallel and to improve coding. The modified median-adaptive predictor (MMAP) facilitates hardware implementations for decoders running at 3 pixels/clock. The MMAP predicts a current sample value as a function of reconstructed previously coded samples to the left and above the current sample. The encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 may use identical sets of reconstructed samples for this purpose, and hence the MMAP produces the same results in both the encoder 1300 and the decoder 1400. MMAP may be the default predictor, and is effective at predicting sample values in most conditions.

The MPP predicts a current sample from a value that is approximately at the mid-point of the valid range for the sample. The MPP has the benefit of bounding the maximum size of the residual. MPP may be selected in place of MMAP when the number of bits required to code the samples in of one component of a group would be greater than or equal to the bit depth for that component minus the quantization shift.

The BP predicts a current sample from a reconstructed previously coded sample to the left of the current sample in the same scan line. The offset from the current sample to the predictor position is a BP vector. The BP vector and the decision of whether or not to use BP are determined automatically by the BP function, which is the same in both the encoder and decoder.

Block Prediction

Block prediction may predict the current sample where the predictor is a sample to the left of the current sample, in the same line. The relative position of the reference sample may be between (−3) and (−10), inclusive. Using additional pixel locations may improve quality. The relative position is a vector within the same line of samples; this is referred to as the block prediction vector.

The search to find the best vector may be performed on the previous line of samples, rather than the line that is currently being coded. In one implementation, the block search compares a set of 9 consecutive samples with reference samples using various potential vectors with values ranging from −3 to −10. The current samples and the reference samples being compared are in the same scan line, e.g., the line above the line of the sample to be coded. For each vector considered, a SAD (sum of absolute differences) is calculated over 9 samples in each of the current and reference set. The vector with the lowest SAD value is selected. In cases of ties, the vector closest to 0 is selected.

The 9-pixel SAD of the vector −1 is also used in order to determine whether BP or MMAP should be used. More details of predictor selection are given below.

A vector, once selected, applies to each group of 3 samples. Therefore the block search is performed every 3 samples.

A vector means that the predictor for pixel X is the pixel that is to the left of pixel X in same line, the distance to the left in pixel units being equal to the vector value.

FIG. 15 illustrates example sample sets 1500 for block search, showing several reference samples 1502 and vectors 1504, 1506. An example of the current sample ‘x’ 1505 and the current SAD calculation samples 1508 are also shown.

Indexed Color History (ICH) Logic 1312, 1408

FIG. 16 illustrates an example of indexed color history 1600.

In many types of content, such as computer-generated text and graphics, similar pixel values tend to appear in reasonably close proximity while not necessarily being adjacent to one another. Because of this, it can be helpful to keep track of a number of recently-used pixel values in the Indexed Color History (ICH). When the encoder 1300 selects ICH-mode for a particular group, it sends index values corresponding to the selected pixel values within the ICH. These index values are used directly in the output pixel stream.

The ICH logic includes a storage unit that maintains a set of recently used color values that were coded using another coding method such as predictive coding. The encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 may maintain identical states of the ICH. The ICH may have 32 entries, with an index value pointing to each entry. For groups that are ICH coded, each pixel may be coded with a 5-bit ICH index, which points to one of the entries. As each group of pixels is encoded in the encoder or decoded in the decoder in P-mode, the values of all the pixels in the group are entered into the ICH. The ICH may be managed as a shift register where the most-recently used (MRU) values are at the top and the least-recently used (LRU) values are at the bottom. New entries are added at the top and all other entries are shifted down, with the bottom entries falling out of the ICH. When a group is coded in ICH-mode, the three indices used to code those pixels reference entries in the ICH. When an ICH entry is referenced, it is moved to the top of the ICH and the other values above the prior location of the entry are shifted down by 1. This operation is performed in parallel for all 3 entries of each ICH coded group, and the most recent, e.g., the rightmost pixel value of the group becomes the MRU. The result is that the most recently used (MRU) value is at the top of the history and the least recently used (LRU) value is at the bottom of the history. Whenever a P-mode group of three pixels is added at top of the history, the three LRU values are removed.

For the first line each slice, all 32 ICH entries are treated as part of the shift register. For lines after the first line of a slice, the last 7 index values are defined to point to reconstructed pixels in the line above the current line, rather than entries in the ICH. This is useful for efficient coding of pixel values that are not in the history shift register, and it improves coding with some content.

ICH mode may be selected on a per-group basis by the encoder 1300. The encoder 1300 signals the use of ICH mode for a group using an escape code in the luma substream DSU-VLC. For each group coded in ICH mode, each pixel in the group is coded using a fixed-length 5 bit code, where the index values point into the history. The decoder 1400 decodes each ICH-coded group by determining the use of ICH mode via the bitstream syntax and decoding each pixel in the group by reading the values pointed to by the ICH indices that constitute the coded values of the pixels. Both the encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 update the ICH state identically every group by inserting P-mode pixels into the ICH and by re-ordering the ICH entries in response to ICH mode groups.

Entropy Coding Logic 1314, 1404

The display stream coding defines syntax at multiple layers. The lowest layer is called the substream layer. There may be three substreams in each slice, one for each component. The three substreams may be multiplexed together by a sub-stream multiplexing (SSM) process to form a coded slice. If there is more than one slice per line, the coded slices may be multiplexed by the slice multiplex process; and if there is only one slice per line, the slice multiplex process is not used. The resulting bits of all slices are concatenated to form a coded picture. Each coded picture is optionally preceded by a picture parameter set (PPS).

Substream Layer

The display stream encoding may use an entropy coding technique referred to above as DSU-VLC for coding residuals associated with predictive coding. ICH coding of pixels uses a fixed-length code for each pixel. Specialized values are used to signal the use of ICH mode, and other codes signal quantization adjustments associated with flat regions of pixels.

TABLE 1 Examples of sizes for different residual values Residual values Size in bits Representation −3 3 101b −2 2 10b −1 1 1b 0 0 <none> 1 2 01b 2 3 010b 3 3 011b

The pixels in each slice may be organized into groups of three consecutive pixels each. A group is a logical construction employed by the encoding and decoding processes, but need not be directly represented in the bitstream. DSU-VLC organizes samples into units. A unit is the coded set of residuals of three consecutive samples of one component. Each unit has two parts: a prefix and a residual. The size of each residual is predicted based on the size of the three previous residuals of the same component type and any change in QP that may have occurred. The prefix may be a unary code that indicates the non-negative difference between the size of the largest residual in the unit and the predicted size. If the difference is negative, the value coded by the prefix is zero. The residual portion of each unit contains 3 values, one for each sample in the unit. The residual values are coded in 2's complement. The number of bits allocated to residuals can vary from unit to unit; however, all 3 residuals in one unit may be allocated the same number of bits.

In addition, the prefix for luma units also indicates whether or not ICH mode is used for each group. A transition from P-mode to ICH-mode may be indicated by an escape code, e.g., a prefix value that indicates a size that is one greater than the maximum possible residual size for luma. The maximum possible residual size for luma depends on the QP value that applies to luma in the group. An ICH-mode group immediately following another ICH mode group may be indicated by a luma prefix code consisting of a single “1” bit. A P-mode group immediately following an ICH-mode group may be indicated by a modified unary code.

For an ICH-mode group, the residual portion may be 5 bits for each component, where each 5 bit code is an ICH index which codes a complete pixel, and the chroma components do not utilize a prefix. For subsequent ICH-mode groups following an initial ICH-mode group, each group may use 16 bits for every group, e.g., a 1 bit prefix and (3) 5 bit ICH codes.

The luma substream may also contain some conditional fixed-length codes in the syntax for the purpose of the encoder conveying information about a transition from a busy area to a smooth area. This “flatness indication” is discussed in more detail below.

Substream Multiplexing

The three component-wise substreams may be multiplexed together using a fixed-length substream multiplexing scheme with no headers. One technique for doing so is described in the U.S. Patent Publication Number 2011-0305282 A1, which is incorporated by reference. FIG. 17 shows an example of the results of substream multiplexing 1700, including various multiplexed words and components 1702. Each mux word may have an identical size, e.g., 48 bits for 8 or 10 bits per component (bpc), or 64 bits for 12 bpc. The order of the mux words and components 1702 is derived from the order in which parallel substream decoders use the data in order to decode in real time.

FIG. 18 shows an example of substream demultiplexing logic 1800. The logic 1800 includes a memory such as a rate buffer 1802, a demultiplexer 1804, and funnel shifters with VLD 1806, 1808, and 1810. The combination of the funnel shifter and VLD is referred to as a substream processor (SSP). At each group time, any combination of the SSP's may request a mux word or none at all. If a request is received from an SSP, the demultiplexer 1804 sends a mux word to that SSP. If multiple requests are received in the same group time, the demultiplexer 1804 sends a mux word to each SSP that made a request.

At the end of the slice, the SSP's may request mux words beyond the end of the substream layer data. Therefore, the encoder 1300 may insert padding mux words as needed at the end of the slice.

FIG. 19 shows an example of the substream multiplexing logic 1900, including VLC and funnel shifters 1902, 1904, 1906, balance memories (e.g., FIFOs) 1908, 1910, 1912, a multiplexer 1914, rate buffer 1916, and demultiplexer model 1918. The demultiplexer model 1918 helps the encoder 1300 to order the mux words correctly. The balance FIFO's 1908, 1910, 1912 may store many groups worth of data in order to provide the mux words at the appropriate time.

Rate Control

The encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 may use identical rate control (RC) algorithms, configured identically. The decisions made by the RC algorithm to adjust QP in the encoder are mimicked in the decoder 1400, such that the decoder 1400 has the same QP value as the encoder 1300 at every pixel, without any bits being spent communicating the QP value, except for the flatness indication. RC decisions are made in the encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 based on information previously transmitted and received. RC can change the QP value every group.

Rate Control Goals

The RC provides the encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 with quantization parameters (QP) to use for each group. Since the RC function is the same on both the encoder side and the decoder side, the base QP value is known to both encoder 1300 and decoder 1400, and it does not need to be transmitted in the bitstream. However, the base QP value or adjustments to the QP value may be sent in the bitstream for flatness indication, described below.

The RC attempts to ensure hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) conformance. There is a model of an idealized rate buffer (FIFO) that converts a varying number of bits to code each group into a specified constant bit rate. The RC is designed to ensure that this FIFO will not overflow or underflow assuming that bits are removed at an assumed constant bit rate.

The RC optimizes picture quality in its QP decisions. It is desirable to use a lower QP on relatively flat areas and a higher QP on busy areas due to perceptual masking. In addition, it is desirable to maintain a constant quality for all pixels; for example, the first line of a slice has limited prediction, and may therefore use an additional bit allocation.

HRD Buffer Model

A hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) model describes the behavior of an idealized rate buffer in a decoding system. An encoder rate buffer model may be mirrored on the decoder side. The encoder model tries to ensure that there are no overflows or underflows. Since the DSC may be constant bit rate (CBR), the HRD model fullness is equal to buffer size—encoder buffer fullness; therefore, the decoder buffer model does not overflow or underflow. The DSC encoder rate buffer model may define a schedule for bits entering and leaving the rate buffer.

During the initial delay, e.g., initial transmission delay, the encoder generates bits into its rate buffer every group, but no bits are removed. During this period, the encoder model fullness increases according to the number of bits that are generated. The delay period may be specified in terms of group times or pixel times, as examples.

As long as there are more pixels in the slice to be encoded, the encoder generates bits according to the content. Bits are removed at the constant rate that is specified. To prevent the buffer fullness from dropping below 0, the prediction mode may be overridden to use MPP, which enforces a minimum data rate. Once the last group of a slice has been encoded, no more bits are added to the rate buffer. Bits continue to leave the rate buffer at the constant rate until the buffer becomes empty, after which the encoder sends zero bits to ensure that the compressed slice size in bits is equal to bpp* number of pixels in slice, in CBR operation.

The decoder initial delay is specified as the complement of the encoder initial delay; e.g., the HRD delay minus encoder initial delay. The decoder rate buffer fullness then tracks as the complement of the encoder buffer fullness.

CBR vs. VBR

Under conditions when the encoder rate buffer would otherwise underflow, there is a design choice of whether the encoder inserts bits to prevent underflow, or it uses variable bit rate (VBR). To prevent underflow, the RC determines whether underflow is possible after the next coded group, and when this condition occurs it forces MPP mode which enforces a minimum bit rate. The decoder does not require any special logic to handle stuffing, as it decodes the extra bits just as it would any other group.

It is possible to support VBR. With VBR, the encoder 1300 stops sending bits under certain conditions when it would otherwise underflow and has no bits to send (Off). The encoder 1300 then starts sending bits again at some identified event (On). To make on-off VBR compatible with a general HRD that does not depend on the real time behavior of the transport, the off and on events may be specified.

With VBR, the encoder stops sending bits when it would otherwise underflow and has no bits to send. The encoder's RC process operates once per group. At each group, it adds to the buffer model the number of bits that code the group, and normally it subtracts from the buffer model the nominal number of bits per group, which is 3*bpp, adjusted as necessary to form an integer number of bits. With VBR, if this subtraction of bits/group from the buffer model fullness would result in a negative value of fullness, the RC subtracts the normal number of bits and then clamps the buffer fullness to zero, i.e. the model fullness is never allowed to be negative. In a real system with a real transport and real decoder, when the encoder has no bits to send, i.e. its real rate buffer is empty, the transport does not send any bits and the decoder does not receive any bits. The decoder's real rate buffer may be full, but it does not overflow. When the encoder does have bits to send, transport is expected to transmit them at the normal rate and the decoder receives them at that rate. The decoder's real buffer does not overflow nor underflow, and the decoder does not have to do anything special to handle VBR. The transport should understand when there is and is not valid data available to send and receive.

Slices

The number of bits that code a picture may be equal to the number of pixels of that picture times the specified bpp rate. Further, any subset of slices of a picture may be updated in place in a compressed frame buffer by over-writing the previous version of each of the corresponding slices. One consequence is that a complete picture can be transmitted as a series of consecutive slices comprising the entire picture, and that an entire picture transmitted as a series of consecutive slices meets the same requirement as for slices, e.g., the number of bits equals the number of pixels times the bpp rate, and also the entire picture comprising slices should conform to an appropriate HRD model to ensure correct real time buffer behavior with this mode of operation. One consequence is that the delay from the start of transmission to the start of decoding and the delay from the end of transmission to the end of decoding are the same as one another and the same for each slice.

The algorithm uses a rate buffer model, which may be referred to as a rate buffer. The algorithm allows the encoder's rate buffer to have up to a specified fullness, e.g., a maximum number of bits, at the end of each slice. If at the end of coding a slice the encoder's buffer has fewer bits than this maximum number, it may pad the remaining bits at the end with 0s, for example, to produce exactly the required number of bits. This final number of bits occupies a specified number of pixel times to transmit at the specified bpp rate. This number of pixel times is the delay from the end of encoding to the end of transmission, which may be called the final transmission delay. The total rate buffer delay, in units of pixel times, in the combination of an idealized encoder and decoder is equal to the rate buffer size divided by the bpp rate. The initial transmission delay, from the start of encoding a slice until the start of transmission of that slice, is the same as the final transmission delay. The initial decoding delay, e.g., the delay in the HRD timing model from the start of reception of a slice to the start of decoding of the slice is set equal to the total end-end rate buffer delay minus the initial transmission delay. This permits correct operation per the description above.

FIG. 20 shows an example of slice timing and delays 2000. FIG. 20 shows slice input video timing 2002, slice transmission timing 2004, and slice decoding timing 2006. The algorithm may have a fixed parameter value for the maximum number of bits that can be in the encoder buffer at the end of a slice, typically ˜4 kbits. The resulting ending transmission delay is a function of the bpp rate; it is set to ceiling (4096/bpp_rate). At 8 bpp, this delay is 170 group times, and at 12 bpp it is 114 group times. The initial delay may be set to this value.

The end-end HRD delay is equal to the HRD buffer size divided by the bpp rate. For example, if the HRD buffer size is 19,836 bits and the rate is 12 bpp, the end-end HRD delay is floor (19,836/36)=551 group times. This is actually an upper bound, and the HRD delay could be set to a lower value, however if a lower value were used then the algorithm would not be able to take full advantage of the available buffer size for purposes of RC.

The initial decoding delay, which applies directly to the HRD and indirectly to real decoders, should be set to the HRD delay—initial transmission delay. In the example here, where the initial transmission delay is set to 114 group times as above, the initial decoder delay is 551−114=437 group times. This is a delay that applies to the HRD, i.e. an idealized hypothetical decoder. A real decoder is of course free to have additional delay.

The algorithm's rate buffer size, which is also the HRD buffer size, can be selected by an encoder as long as it does not exceed the capabilities of compatible decoders. The optimum rate buffer size is a function of several factors including the bpp rate and the width of slices.

Note that the initial transmission delay is typically a function of bpp rate. The HRD rate buffer size may be set by the encoder as long as it does not exceed the capabilities of decoders. It is practical to design real systems with adjustable bit rate and constant end-end delay, from video into the encoder to video out of the decoder, and with constant delay from compressed data into the decoder to video put of the decoder. An encoder may set the initial transmission delay and the initial decoder delay to selected values to facilitate seamless changes of bit rate with constant delay.

Options for Slices

The encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 support a wide variety of slice widths and heights. One configuration is slice width=¼ picture width and slice height=32 lines. Another possible configuration is slice width=picture width and slice height=8 lines. The slice dimensions can be specified up to the picture width by the picture height. To minimize extra data that may need to be sent, equal-sized slices may be used throughout the picture.

Taller slices may lead to better compression. Extra bits are allocated to the first line of each slice to maximize quality and to prevent artifacts at the boundaries between slices. The number of extra bits allocated per group on the first line is set via a parameter in the PPS. The numbers of bits available to all lines after the first line each slice may be reduced in order that the total number of bits per slice is the number of pixels times the bpp rate. The more lines there are after the first line in each slice, the less reduction in bit allocation is required. Therefore a slice height of 32 lines typically gives better performance than a slice height of 8. There is no cost associated with slice height—there is no additional buffering nor any other additional resources. The encoder 1300 and decoder 1400 support a slice size equal to the entire picture size.

Slices narrower than the full screen width may be desirable for various practical purposes. Narrower slices provide the ability to update, via partial update, a narrower slice, or to facilitate parallel processing at low cost. In practice, multiple slices per line can use one line buffer the size of the picture width. With multiple slices per line, and slices that are taller than one line, the rate buffers for the different slices may be independent. For example, with four slices per line, a practical implementation would use four rate buffers. The sizes of each rate buffer can be specified to be smaller for the case of 4 slices/line than they would normally be specified for the case of one slice/line, as the optimum rate buffer size is a function of the slice width, although not exactly proportional. Hence there is a small increase in the total amount of rate buffer space when there are multiple slices per line, while there is no increase in the total amount of line buffer space.

Slice Multiplexing

In systems configured to use more than one slice per scan line, the compressed data may be multiplexed according to a specific pattern in order to minimize cost in both encoders and decoders. The recommended pattern is as follows. For an integer number S of slices per line, each slice has P pixels per line, and the picture is W pixels wide. Preferably P is equal for all slices, equal to W/S, which is preferably an integer. The multiplexed bit stream contains a number of bits=P*bpp rate for the first slice of the first row of slices, then P*bpp rate for the 2nd slice of the first row, and so on for all slices of the first row.

One iteration of this pattern has W*bpp rate bits, which may be the same number of bits as would have been used if there were one slice per line. If P*bpp rate is not an integer, an adjustment can be made to result in an integer number of bits per slice. For example, the number of bits included for one line of one slice may be the integer truncated value of P*bpp plus the accumulated residual amount from previous truncations. Then this pattern repeats as many times as needed to transmit all the bits of all slices in the first row of slices. An application specification, for example a transport specification that is designed to carry DSC compressed image data, may carry data from different slices in separate packets. In that case, the last bits from one slice may be in a separate packet from those of other slices, including the first bits of the vertically adjacent slice immediately below the first one. Alternatively an application specification may choose to package the last bits of one slice with the first bits of another slice, for example a horizontally adjacent neighboring slice or a vertically adjacent neighboring slice. The overall pattern may repeat for the entire image. It is not necessary to include markers or other indications in the bit stream indicating which bits are for which slice. Instead, the transport layer may provide such indicators.

Additional information on slice multiplexing follows.

Slice multiplexing may occur when VBR is disabled, e.g., stuffing is enabled. When stuffing is disabled, the number of bits coding each slice may vary, e.g., the DSC operation is VBR. Pictures include some number of slices. Slices may be identically-sized when possible, e.g., when the ratio of picture width to slice width is an integer. In case this ratio is not an integer, the widths of the columns of slices may be set to integer values that differ by no more than 1, and whose sum is the picture width. Slice multiplexing is possible also when VBR is enabled as well. The memories used and multiplexing pattern will depend on characteristics of the link, including for example, the overhead required to enter or leave a low-power state.

With VBR disabled (stuffing enabled) slices of the same width are coded using the same number of compressed bits. When the slice width is equal to the picture width, the slice layer data is sent sequentially (slice 0, slice 1, . . . , slice N−1, where N is the number of slices). When the slice width is shorter than the picture width, the slice data for all slices on the same line may be multiplexed into fixed-length chunks. The length of each chunk may be equal to floor (bits_per_pixel*slice_width). The floor( ) function is used since bits_per_pixel may be fractional. For example, in a case where the picture is split into two equal-sized slices on each line, the multiplexed bitstream would contain:

Slice 0 chunk/Slice 1 chunk/Slice 0 chunk/Slice 1 chunk . . .

The final chunks of each slice may be padded with zero bits if needed due to the ceil( ) function.

With VBR enabled, the number of bits of coding each slice may differ from P*bpp rate. For example, the number of bits may be less than this value. The number of bits per chunk may differ from floor (bits_per_pixel*slice_width), for example the number of bits may be less than this value. Slices may be multiplexed using chunks of unequal numbers of bits. The numbers of bits per chunk may be indicated for example by packet length information or marker codes in a transport layer.

The display stream coding may be specified in terms of components that are labeled Y, Co, and Cg. If the convert_rgb flag is equal to 0 in the current PPS, the encoder may accept YCbCr input. The Cb component may be mapped to the Co component label. The Cr component may be mapped to the Cg component label. In this case, the bit depth of the Cb/Co and Cr/Cg components may be equal to the Y component, whose bit depth is specified using the bits_per_component field in the current PPS. If the convert_rgb flag is equal to 1 in the current PPS, the encoder may perform color-space conversion from RGB to YCoCg. The color space conversion may be:

cscCo = R − B t = B + (cscCo >> 1) cscCg = G − t y = t + (cscCg >> 1)

The cscCo and cscCg values have one additional bit of dynamic range compared with Y. The final Co and Cg values may be centered around the midpoint:

Co = cscCo + (1 << bits_per_component) Cg = cscCg + (1 << bits_per_component)

Note that here, the bits_per_component variable may represent the number of bits of each of the R, G, and B components, which is one less than the number of bits per component for the Co and Cg components. If a slice extends beyond the right edge of a picture, the right-most pixel in each line of the picture may be repeated to pad the slice to the correct horizontal size. If a slice extends beyond the bottom edge of a picture, the bottom-most pixel in each pixel column of the picture may be repeated to pad the slice to the correct vertical size.

Line Storage

The display stream compression may include buffer memory to hold the previous line's reconstructed pixel values for MMAP prediction and ICH. In some cases, a decoder line buffer may have sufficient storage to contain the full-range reconstructed samples. However, some decoders may choose to use a smaller bit depth to lower the implementation cost.

If a smaller bit depth is used, the decoder may communicate this to the encoder. The encoder may set the linebuf_width according to what the decoder implementation supports. The following method for bit-reducing samples may be used:

shiftAmount = MAX(0, maxBpc − linebuf_width); round = (shiftAmount>0) ? (1<<(shiftAmount−1)) : 0; storedSample = (sample + round) >> shiftAmount; readSample = storedSample << shiftAmount;

where maxBpc is the bit depth of the current component, storedSample is the sample value that is written to the line buffer, and readSample is the value that is read back.

Prediction Types

There are three prediction types that may be supported in P-mode: MMAP, BP, and MPP.

Modified Median-Adaptive Prediction (MMAP)

The modified median-adaptive predictor is specified in the table below.

c b d e a P0 P1 P2

Table 2—Pixels Surrounding Current Group

Table 2 shows the labeling convention for the pixels surrounding the three pixels in the group being predicted (P0, P1, and P2). Pixels ‘c’, ‘b’, ‘d’, and ‘e’ are from the previous line, and pixel ‘a’ is the reconstructed pixel immediately to the left.

A QP-adaptive filter may be applied to reference pixels from the previous line before they are used in the MMAP formulas below. A horizontal low-pass filter [0.25 0.5 0.25] may be applied to the previous line to get filtered pixels filtC, filtB, filtD, and filtE. For example, filtB=(c+2*b+d+2)>>2;

The filtered pixels may be blended with the original pixels to get the values that are used in MMAP (blendC, blendB, blendD, blendE). The following method is used for the blending:

diffC = CLAMP(filtC − c, −QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2, QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2); blendC = c + diffC; diffB = CLAMP(filtB − b, −QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2, QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2); blendB = b + diffB; diffD = CLAMP(filtD − d, −QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2, QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2); blendD = d + diffD; diffE = CLAMP(filtE − e, −QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2, QuantDivisor[qlevel]/2); blendE = e + diffE;

The predicted value for each is given below:

P0 = CLAMP(a + blendB − blendC, MIN(a, blendB), MAX(a, blendB)); P1 = CLAMP(a + blendD − blendC + R0, MIN(a, blendB, blendD), MAX(a, blendB, blendD)); P2 = CLAMP(a + blendE − blendC + R0 + R1, MIN(a, blendB, blendD, blendE), MAX(a,blendB, blendD, blendE));

where R0 and R1 are the inverse quantized residuals for the first and second samples in the group.

In the case of the first line of a slice, the previous line's pixels are not available. So the prediction for each pixel becomes:

P0 = a; P1 = CLAMP(a + R0, 0, (1<<maxBpc)−1) ; P2 = CLAMP(a + R0 + R1, 0, (1<<maxBpc)−1) ;

where maxBpc is the bit depth for the component that is being predicted.

Block Prediction (BP)

The BP predictor is a pixel value taken from a pixel some number of pixels to the left of the current pixel. The “block prediction vector” (bpVector) is a negative value that represents the number of pixels to the left to use for the prediction. In one implementation, the block prediction vector is always between −3 and −10 inclusive, which means that it uses samples outside of the current group.

The BP predictor is used to predict all three components from the pixel referred to by the block prediction vector: P[hPos]=recon[hPos+bpVector];

So the predicted values for the 3×1 group correspond with the reconstructed pixels values for the 3×1 set of pixels that is pointed to by the block prediction vector.

Midpoint Prediction

The midpoint predictor is a value at or near the midpoint of the range, and depends on the value of the reconstructed pixel immediately to the left of the current pixel (pixel “a” in Table 2). midpointPred=(1<<(maxBpc−1))+(a&((1<<qLevel)−1));

where maxBpc is the bit depth for the component being predicted, and qLevel is the quantization level that applies to the current component.

Predictor Selection

Block prediction is supported by the encoder 1300. The encoder 1300 may choose to disable block prediction in the stream (e.g., because the attached decoder does not support block prediction or because the picture would not benefit from block prediction) by setting block_pred_enable in the PPS equal to 0. In this case, MMAP is selected over block prediction, and the algorithms in this section are not used.

The decision to use either BP or MMAP may be made on a group basis using information from the previous line. This means that the decision can be made up to a line time in advance of processing the current group if it helps the implementation. The group referred to in this section starts at a horizontal location of hPos pixels from the leftmost pixel column in the slice.

FIG. 21 shows an example 2100 of 3×1 partial SADs that form 9×1 SAD. First, a search may be performed to find the best block prediction vector. The reference pixels for the SAD may be the set of 9 pixels in the previous line starting at a horizontal location of hPos−6. The SAD is computed between the reference pixels and 9 different block prediction candidateVector's (−1, −3, −4, −5, −6, −7, −8, −9, and −10) pointing to the previous line's pixels. The 9-pixel SAD is computed as a sum of 3 3-pixel SAD's (see FIG. 21). First, each absolute difference may be truncated and clipped before being summed in the 3-pixel SAD according to: modifiedAbsDiff=MIN(absDiff>>(maxBpc−7),0×3F);

where maxBpc is the bit depth for the current component.

The resulting 6-bit modifiedAbsDiff values are summed over each set of three adjacent samples and over the 3 components, resulting in a 10 bit value that represents the 3×1 partial SAD for one component; this 10-bit value is clamped to 9-bits (e.g., values greater than 511 are clamped to 511). Three 9-bit 3-pixel partial SAD's are summed to get the final 9-pixel SAD, which is an 11-bit number. The 3 LSB's of each 9×1 SAD are truncated before comparison:

bpSad[candidateVector] = MIN(511, sad3x1_0[candidateVector] + sad3x1_1[candidateVector] + sad3x1_2[candidateVector]);

The 9 9-pixel SAD's are compared to one another, and the lowest SAD may be selected, with ties broken by selecting the smallest magnitude block prediction vector. If the lowest SAD block prediction vector is −1, the bpCount counter is reset to zero and MMAP is selected for this group. If the lowest SAD block prediction vector is not−1, the candidate BP vector becomes the vector with the lowest SAD, and the bpCount counter is incremented unless hPos<9.

BP may be selected if the following conditions are all true:

The bpCount value is greater than or equal to 3.

lastEdgeCount is less than 9. The lastEdgeCount value represents the number of pixels that have gone by since an “edge” occurred. An “edge” occurs when ABS (current sample−left sample)>32<<(bits_per_component−8) for any component.

Selecting Between BP/MMAP and MPP

The encoder may decide whether to use BP/MMAP based on the size of the quantized residuals that would be generated if BP/MMAP were selected. For example, the encoder may determine the maximum residual size for BP/MMAP for each of the three components. If the maximum residual size for any component is greater than or equal to a threshold such as maxBpc−qLevel for that component, then MPP may be selected for that component.

In addition, the encoder may select MPP in order to enforce a minimum data rate to prevent underflow.

Quantization

The predicted value of each sample of the pixel is subtracted from the corresponding input samples to form the residual sample values E, one for each component of the pixel. E=x−Px, where x is input, Px is predicted value.

Each residual value E may be quantized using division with truncation by a divisor that is a power of 2 and using rounding with a rounding value that is 1 less than half the divisor.

If E<0 QE = (E-ROUND)/DIVISOR Else QE = (E+ROUND)/DIVISOR // the “/” operator is div with truncation as in C

Where: DIVISOR=2**qLevel=<<qLevel ROUND=DIVISOR/2−1

The value of qLevel may be different for luma and chroma and is determined by the rate control (RC) function.

MPP quantized residuals may be checked to ensure that their sizes do not exceed a threshold such as maxBpc−qLevel, where qLevel is the quantization level for the component type (luma or chroma) and maxVal is the maximum possible sample value for the component type. If an MPP residual exceeds this size, the encoder may change the residual to the nearest residual with a size of maxBpc−qLevel.

Inverse Quantization and Reconstruction

The encoder may follow the same process used in the decoder to arrive at the reconstructed pixel values. For pixels that are predicted using MMAP, BP, or MPP, the reconstructed sample value may be: reconsample=CLAMP(predSample+(quantized_residual<<qLevel),0,maxVal);

where predSample is the predicted sample value, quantized_residual is the quantized residual, qLevel is the quantization level for the component type (luma or chroma), and maxVal is the maximum possible sample value for the component type.

Flatness QP Override

FIG. 22 shows an example 2200 of original pixels used for encoder flatness checks. Encoders generate a “flatness signal” if upcoming input pixels are relatively flat to allow the QP to drop quickly. The encoder algorithm to determine the flatness bits in the syntax is described below, as is the algorithm that both the encoder and decoder follow to modify the QP.

Encoder Flatness Decision

A set of 4 consecutive groups is called a supergroup. The encoder examines each supergroup before it is encoded in order to determine which, if any, of the groups are “flat”. The first supergroup starts with the 2nd group in the slice as shown in FIG. 22. Supergroups may be defined consecutively within the slice. A supergroup that includes the last group of a line may wrap around to include groups on the subsequent line.

The flatness determination may be done for each group within the supergroup independently and includes a determination of the “flatness type” (e.g., either somewhat flat or very flat) for each group. Two flatness checks may be performed, both using pixels from the original, uncompressed image.

Flatness check 1 determines the MAX and MIN value among the samples shown in FIG. 22 for each component. A value of flatQLevel is determined for each component: flatQLevel=MapQpToQlevel(MAX(0,masterQp−4));

The masterQp value that is used is the one that is used for rate control for the 2nd group to the left of the supergroup that is being tested. MapQptoQlevel maps the masterQP value to qLevelY (luma) and qLevelC (chroma) values that are used for both luma and chroma. For example, a masterQP value of 0 may map to qLevelC and qLevelY values of 0, values 1 and 2 may map to qLevelC values of 1 and 2 respectively, and successive unit increases in masterQP may map to unit increases alternating between qLevelY and qLevelC.

If the MAX−MIN for any component is greater than (2<<(bits_per_component−8)), the check for very flat fails for flatness check 1; otherwise, it passes. If the MAX−MIN for any component is greater than QuantDivisor[flatQLevel], the check for somewhat flat fails for flatness check 1; otherwise, it passes.

If flatness check 1 indicates that the group is either somewhat flat or very flat, that result is the final result that is used for the group. If both fail, flatness check 2 is performed over the 6 pixels indicated in FIG. 22. The same comparisons are done as in flatness check 1, except that the MAX and MIN are computed over 6 samples rather than 4. The final result of flatness check 2 is then used as the final result for the group.

For a given supergroup, there are then four flatness indications of either very flat, flat, somewhat flat, or not flat. The value of prevlsFlat is initialized to 1 if the previous supergroup had a flatness indication; otherwise it is initialized to 0. The following algorithm is used to distill the flatness information into a single flatness location and type:

  Loop over four groups in supergroup {    If !prevIsFlat && group is either very flat or somewhat flat     Current group and flatness type is signaled    Else     prevIsFlat = 0; }

If no group is selected, no QP modification is made and flatness_flag for the supergroup is set to 0 in the entropy decoder. If a group is selected, the flatness_flag for the supergroup is set to 1, and the corresponding group is signaled as the first_flat group in the bit stream along with its associated flatness_type. The entropy encoder will only signal flatness_flag if the masterQp value is within the range of flatness_min_qp and flatness_max_qp, so no adjustment is made in the RC if the corresponding masterQp is out of range.

The encoder flatness searches do not span to the next line. If a group within a supergroup falls on the next line, it is not considered to be flat. However, the first group of a line may contain the next_flatness_flag syntax element assuming the syntax allows it at that point.

Flatness QP Adjustment

The encoder and decoder make the same QP adjustment for a group where a flatness indication has been made. The RC receives a flatness signal corresponding to a particular group within a supergroup that may be either “somewhat flat” or “very flat”. It should be noted that if the current masterQp is less than 7<<(2*(bits_per_component−8)), the flatness indication may be assumed to be “somewhat flat”.

For a “very flat” signal, the QP is adjusted as follows: masterQp=1<<(2*(bits_per_component−8));

For a “somewhat flat” signal: masterQp=MAX(stQp−4,0);

If there is no flatness signal for a particular group: masterQp=stQp

If the flatness QP override modifies the masterQp, the modified masterQp is used as the starting point for the short-term rate control on the next RC cycle.

Block Prediction

Block prediction predicts the current sample where, for example, the predictor is a sample to the left of the current sample. In one implementation example, the relative position of the reference sample is between (−1) and (−18), inclusive. The relative position is a vector within the same line of samples.

The encoder may perform a search to find the optimal vector on the previous line of samples, rather than on the line that is currently being coded. This choice may be made to simplify hardware implementation and circuit timing, while including the (−1) vector in the search set. The encoder may implement a block search that compares a set of, e.g., 8 consecutive samples using various potential vectors with values ranging from −1 to −18. The current samples and the reference samples being compared may be in the same scan line, which may be the line above the line of the sample to be coded or the same line as the sample to be coded. For each vector considered, the encoder may calculate a SAD (sum of absolute differences) over, e.g., 8 samples in each of the current and reference set. The encoder may then select the vector with the lowest SAD value. In cases of ties, the encoder may select the vector closest to 0.

The encoder may apply a vector, once selected, to 2, 3 or some other number of adjacent samples, referred to as a prediction block. Therefore the encoder may perform the block search every 2, 3 or some other number of samples.

In various implementations, the relative position, range, and other variables may vary widely from the numeric examples provided above and below.

FIG. 23 shows example block search sample sets 2300. The sample sets 2300 illustrate the sets of samples used for the block search.

In some implementations, the encoder may make the selection between block prediction and MAP prediction by comparing the SAD costs of the block and MAP prediction over, e.g., 8 consecutive pixels. At the first prediction block where block prediction has a lower cost than MAP, the encoder may increment a counter, e.g., from 0 to 1. If block prediction is lower cost than MAP at the next prediction block, the counter is incremented again. If at any prediction block MAP has a lower SAD than block prediction, the counter may be reset to 0. When the counter value reaches a counter threshold, e.g., 3, block prediction may be selected for the current prediction block. Once block prediction is selected, block prediction may continue to be selected for subsequent pixels until reaching a prediction block where the 8-sample MAP error is less than the 8-sample SAD, at which point the counter may be reset to zero and MAP prediction may be selected.

In some implementations, at the left edge of a line, picture or frame, samples that are out of bounds of the picture may be replaced with the value of the sample at the left edge of the picture. This may apply to the current samples and the reference samples.

In an example case, the encoder may perform the block search and associated SAD calculations for the lines starting when the current pixel X is the 9th pixel in the line. At this position, a vector of −1 may use real image samples, rather than repeated edge samples, for the current and reference samples. At this same position, the evaluation of vectors with magnitude greater than 1 may use some samples that are repeats of the left edge sample.

The encoder may perform one block search for the image components. For example, one search for all image components. A block search is performed using, e.g., 3 components for 4:4:4 sampling. In some embodiments, a component may be used for the block search. For an example with 4:2:2 sampling, the luminance (Y) samples may be used for the block search. The SAD cost of a candidate vector may be a function, e.g., the sum of, the SAD costs for that vector for the components used in the search. The block prediction vector is chosen using the combined SADs of the components. The selected vector may apply to any or all components. The decision whether to implement of block prediction or MAP prediction may apply to any or all components.

The encoder may use truncation and clipping at various stages of the block search and SAD comparison operations. In some cases, truncation may allow for lower cost implementations. The absolute difference of two samples used in the block search may be truncated and clipped by applying, for example: MIN(ABSDIFF>>(bpc−7), 0×3F), where >>indicates a rightward shift, MIN is the minimum function, bpc is the number of bits per component, and ABSDIFF is the absolute difference function. The example resulting 6 bit value may be summed over two adjacent samples to form the SAD for one component over a 2-pixel prediction block. In another example, the value may be summed over 3 components where 3 components were used, resulting in a 9 bit value.

For an example case using 4:4:4 sampling where the prediction block size is 2 pixels, the 8-pixel SAD for the candidate vectors, which is the sum over 4 prediction blocks of the 9 bit SADs for the 4 prediction blocks, may be shifted rightward by 3 prior to comparison with other candidate vectors when selecting the lowest cost vector. These comparisons may result in: 9+2−3=8 bit values. The encoder may compare this 8-bit SAD value for the selected vector with the similarly adjusted 8-pixel SAD from the MAP prediction error, to enable selection between MAP and block prediction.

For an example case using 4:2:2 sampling and a prediction block size of 2 pixels, the Y component may be used for the block search. The prediction block SADs may be 7 bits each, and the sum over 8 pixels may use 9 bits. The 8 pixel SAD may be shifted to the right by 1 resulting in 8 bits prior to comparison among the candidate vectors. Similar to the example 4:4:4 sampling case, this 8 bit SAD value for the selected vector may be compared with the similarly adjusted 8-pixel SAD from the MAP prediction error to enable selection between MAP and block prediction. In some embodiments, luma values may be used and chroma values may not be used.

In some embodiments, the individual block searches can be implemented using 4 blocks of 2 samples per block, the right-most of which being the current block. The individual blocks may be compared with reference samples with vectors ranging from, for example, −1 to −18. The block vector determined using the search may be used for the samples of the current block. The search may be performed again when the new current sample is 2 positions to the right of the previous current sample. The current samples at positions 0 & −1 may become the samples at positions −2 & −3 for the next search.

Similarly, samples at positions −2 & −3 become the samples at positions −4 & −5, and those at −4 & −5 become those at −6 & −7. The 18 SAD values resulting from comparing a block to reference samples (e.g., the 18 candidate vectors) are the same values that are produced when the search is performed later. For example, when the new current block is 2 samples to the right of the previous current block. Therefore, implementations may retain and re-use the SAD results for the 18 candidate vectors for each 2-sample block. This re-use of SAD results may significantly reduce the number of search operations performed compared to that used in a direct search of all positions for all samples every block. The algorithmic result from the above discussed implementations may be the same as the result from performing a full direct search for all samples every block.

In some implementations, the block search may be performed on samples from the line above the current line being coded. As a result, there may be a broad range of times when the search can be performed and produce the same result. In some cases, the earliest time the search can be performed may be the earliest time at which the samples are available. Similarly, the latest time the search may be performed may be before the search decision is used to code the current sample. Various implementations may implement the search using differing options.

FIG. 24 shows an example of logic 2400 that a system (e.g., the encoder 104, decoder 106, or other devices) may implement for display stream compression. Regarding block prediction, some types of video have internal repetition that can be coded efficiently by predicting using pixels to the left of the current pixel at some offset or vector with respect to the pixel to be predicted. The predictor may be a scalar or multi-dimensional. The encoder may select the vector by searching for an optimal vector among multiple potential vectors (2402), potential vectors referring to one or more pixels or samples in, e.g., the same picture as the current pixel to be predicted. The vector may be an integer value (equivalent to a pixel copy), or it may have a fractional component. Thus, the vector may refer to a position that is between pixels. The encoder may generate positions between pixels using an interpolation algorithm. The encoder may use such positions for determination of a vector and/or for performing prediction.

In various implementations, in an implicit prediction selection scheme, the encoder and decoder perform the same operation on the reconstructed pixels to determine the optimal predictor to use. Multiple block prediction offsets can be treated as candidate prediction vectors for a single block. For example, one of multiple offsets may be selected according to a determination of which offset would have been the optimal prediction vector for a previously coded block. These candidate predictors may be considered to be part of a set that includes such predictors as the median adaptive predictor, ABCD, and/or others, and the selection of candidate predictors may use the same or similar methods as the selection among other candidate predictor types. It may be statistically likely that some pixel will match a reference pixel pointed to by a candidate vector and not represent a repeated pattern. The encoder and decoder may use a higher degree of spatial consistency for selecting a block predictor (2404). There are several techniques that may be used by the encoder or decoder in isolation or combination to enforce this consistency. In some implementations, the logic 2400 may compute the predictor error by summing absolute differences over a plurality of reconstructed pixels (2406) and normalize the result (2408). Pixels may originate from either or both of the current line's and previous line's reconstructed pixels, for example.

In various implementations, the logic 2400 may compare block predictors based on some number of previous pixels or samples to determine an optimal predictor before prior to selection (2410). The logic may then choose a predictor (2412).

In various implementations, the logic 2400 may indicate block prediction partially explicitly or completely explicitly. The block prediction may be separable into a “selection” process (e.g., selecting from among all possible displacements) and a “decision” process (e.g., deciding whether the selected displacement should be used or not). In some implementations, if an implicit scheme is used, the current and reference samples may include a subset of samples from previous lines' reconstructed samples and current line's reconstructed samples that are available. If explicit signaling is used, the set of original samples from any line may be used. A block of pixels may be considered, for example, as a rectangular or square group of adjacent pixels with some defined dimensions (for example, 4×4 4×1, or other dimensions). However, the block of pixels may be contiguous or non-contiguous and may be a shape other than rectangular or square. The encoder may explicitly signal, e.g., using a flag, variable-length code, or fixed-length code, for each block what the selection vector is for that block. In some cases, the “decision” process can be implicit.

Additionally or alternatively, the logic 2400 may explicitly signal, e.g., using a flag, variable-length code, or fixed-length code, for each block what the “decision” is for that block. In some embodiments, the “selection” process can be implicit.

Additionally or alternatively, the logic 2400 may explicitly signal both the “selection” and “decision” for each block. For example, a variable or fixed length code or flag may be included in the bit stream of the encoded signal to define either or both of the “selection” and “decision”.

In some implementations, the logic 2400 may use the most recently reconstructed pixel or pixels as a substitute left predictor. For example, this substitution may be applied in modes where circuit timing makes a pixel to the left of the current pixel or group unavailable for use as a source of prediction.

Additionally or alternatively, the logic 2400 may implement predictors that can improve performance in some cases. For example, the upper-left, upper, and upper-right pixels (e.g., the adjacent and diagonally-adjacent pixels from the previous line) may be implemented as candidate predictors. These predictors may be implicitly, partially explicitly, or explicitly identified within the bit stream.

In some implementations, a combination of multiple predictors may be used. For example, a median, weighted average, or average of multiple pixels (e.g., upper left, upper, upper right and/or other pixels) may be used as a predictor for a pixel.

In some implementations, a predictor may be selected for a block but used for another block. For example, a predictor may be selected for a first block and used for the block directly below the first block on the next line. In another embodiment, the encoder may use optimal predictors for the adjacent blocks in the line above in conjunction with one or more predictors from the current line to facilitate a more robust predictor selection. The optimal predictors selected for the adjacent blocks in the previous line may not have been used for the adjacent blocks in the previous line. Rather, the adjacent blocks in the previous line may have used optimal predictors from the line prior. For example, a median, average, weighted average, and/or the value of a majority of the predictors may be implemented. In some implementations, a selected set of optimal predictors for the adjacent blocks may be combined for the current block. The optimal predictors selected from among those for the adjacent blocks may vary as the current block changes. In some embodiments, a predictor selected for a current block may be a predictor that is determined to be optimal among multiple choices of predictors that could potentially have been used for a previously coded block. Such a previously coded block may be to the left, above or with another relationship to the current block. Similarly, such predictors may be implicitly, partially explicitly, or explicitly identified within the bit stream. Similarly, such predictors may be implicitly, partially explicitly, or explicitly identified within the bit stream.

Size Prediction

In some implementations, the size for each unit, e.g., group of samples or pixels or a block, in DSU-VLC may be predicted from the values of one or more previously coded samples. For example, the size of a unit may be predicted based on units above (e.g., upper left, upper, and/or upper right) or to the left of the current unit. In some cases it may increase the robustness of the size prediction if multiple predictors are combined. For example, a median, average, or weighted average of units of above and/or to the left may be used. In an example case, the previous sizes may be req_size[t-1], req_size[t-2], and req_size[t-3], where t-1 refers to the sample immediately preceding a current sample and req_size refers to the size in bits that would be required to code sample if a certain coding were used, for example 2s complement. For a weighted average based prediction, the predicted size for the current unit may be given by: Predicted_size=(req_size[t-3]+req_size[t-2]+2*req_size[t-1]+2)>>2 The calculated “Predicted_size” may then be applied for the current unit.

Dithering and Quantization

In some implementations, the quantization discussed above (e.g., performed by predictor & quantizer 204, edge-predictor 414, and/or other devices) may be altered to take the error introduced by the quantization and add back its complement to one or more other pixels that have not yet been quantized. This operation may have the effect of decorrelating the quantization noise, which may improve the picture quality of the resulting decompressed image.

Additionally or alternatively, an encoder (e.g., encoder 104, 200) may implement quantization by mapping the Quantization Parameter to different luma and chroma quantization values. As one specific example:

Quantization Parameter Luma divisor Chroma divisor 0 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 2 4 4 4 4 5 4 8 . . . . . . . . .

This mapping provides a finer granularity than applying a uniformly controlled quantization to both luma and chroma. Although the divisors may be chosen arbitrarily, divisors that are powers of two may be inexpensive to implement.

Rate Control

The human visual system is understood to have varying sensitivity to quantization errors depending in part on local image characteristics. The encoder (e.g., encoders 104, 200) may algorithmically determine which pixels are believed to be more perceptually sensitive to quantization errors, and reduce the quantization error in those areas. One way that the encoder may reduce the quantization error is to lower the quantization parameter (QP) for the specific pixels that are deemed to have distinguishing or perceptually sensitive image information. Reducing the QP may result in an increased number of bits being used to code such pixels.

The encoder may implement the following algorithm for determining which pixels are perceptually sensitive. Referring to the pixels of FIG. 5, the encoder computes a maximum of pixels a, b, c, and d (max) and a minimum of pixels a, b, c, and d (min). If all of the pixels are similar in value, the encoder may expect that the difference max−min would be small. The encoder may then determine that an area of the picture is sensitive if max−min<sens_lut[max>>4]. The following is an example look up table (LUT) of possible values for sens_lut[ ] assuming a, b, c, and d are represented by 8-bit values.

Max >> 4 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Sens_lut 0 24 20 16 12 12 8 8 8 8 4 4 4 4 0 0

In various implementations, other LUTs may be used. For example, a non-linear sensitivity profile for the human visual system may be used. Additionally or alternatively, the LUT may be dynamically selected based on different conditions. For example, a high average luma across multiple pixels for an extended period may trigger a reduction in sensitivity values.

The encoder may select a smaller QP value for pixels that are determined to be sensitive. In various implementations, the sensitivity information may be conveyed explicitly in the bitstream, implicitly through analysis of reconstructed samples, or in a hybrid implicit/explicit manner.

In rate control schemes where quantization control is a direct function or otherwise based on the buffer fullness, the resulting image quality may be degraded in regions where characteristics of the image change rapidly. In one example, a flat area might be adjacent to a high activity area. In the example, the buffer fullness may be high due to the high activity area. This high buffer fullness may result in a relatively high quantization for the flat area, which may result in visible artifacts. It may be desirable to use a low QP for the flat area and a high QP for the high activity area. In some cases, it may be difficult to ascertain these transitions based solely on reconstructed pixel data.

In some cases, an encoder (e.g., encoder 104, 200) may implement an indicator, e.g., a 1-bit indicator. The indicator may indicate information, for blocks of pixels. For example a block size may be 4×4 pixels. The indicator may allow a rate controller (e.g., rate controller 208) to determine whether the block of pixels is relatively flat or relatively active, and to adjust the rate control parameters accordingly.

In various implementations, the encoder may implement a rate control algorithm that is parameterized. For example, two sets of rate control parameters may be implemented: one for low-activity video and another for high-activity video. The blocks may have an associated 1-bit indicator that indicates which parameter set is used by the rate control algorithm.

In some embodiments, the encoder may insert a one-bit indication in a bit stream where the indication indicates the presence or absence of the 1-bit-per-block flags described above within some specified domain, such as a slice or a picture. The encoder may determine whether to implement the parameter sets based on an analysis of the video. For example, the determination may be based on information from a video decoder, deinterlacer, noise reduction, or other image information source; a previous frame's activity; the encoder's own internal pre-analysis of the frame data; and/or other analysis.

In some implementations, the encoder may use multiple rate control algorithms. For example, one algorithm may be optimized for low-activity video, and another may be optimized for high-activity video. There may be indications (e.g., one or more bits) that indicates which algorithm was used, for example for each block of samples or pixels.

Generally, it may be desirable for an image compression system to use lower QP values in regions where the image content is relatively flat or smooth, and higher QP values in regions where the image content is relatively busy or active. In some cases, it may be advantageous to adapt a QP value according to image flatness or activity.

In some implementations, reconstructed sample values may be analyzed to determine a measure of flatness. In some cases, the availability of the reconstructed pixels may depend on the order in which they are encoded or decoded, e.g., a scan order. For example, a scan order may include a raster scan, a boustrophedonic scan, a block-based scan, or other scan order. In one example, reconstructed sample values may be available for samples of pixels above and/or to the left of a current pixel.

Table 2 shows example pixel positions. In some implementations, a QP value may apply to a group of pixels, e.g., {x1, x2, x3} from Table 1. The QP value may be modified with respect to a default value based on examination of previously coded values {P( )}. For example, a default value for QP may be a value that is determined by a rate control algorithm, it may be an implicitly determined QP value, or other value. An encoder and decoder (e.g., encoder 104 and/or decoder 106) pair may use the same QP values for reconstructing corresponding coded pixels. Additionally or alternatively, the encoder and decoder may make similar measurements of flatness and produce the same results for the corresponding groups of pixels. A group of pixels may comprise 1, 2, 3 or any other number of pixels.

TABLE 2 P(0,−3) P(0,−2) P(0,−1) P(0,0) P(0,1) P(0,2) P(0,3) P(1,−3) P(1,−2) P(1,−1) X0 X1 X2

In some cases, the examination may use values P(0,−1), P(0,0), P(0,1), P(0,2) and P(0,3) from Table 2 to determine a QP value or modification to a QP value for pixel x0 or pixels {x0, x1, x2}. Additionally or alternatively, the examination may use values on the same line as {X}, e.g., P(1,−3), P(1,−2) and P(1,−1). For example, a flatness measure may be determined based on the difference between the minimum and maximum values of the pixels or samples examined, e.g., flatness measure=Max({P})−Min({P}).

In some implementations, a flatness measure may use a LUT. Flatness may be defined as Max({P})−Min({P})<flatness_lut[Max({P})>>4]. The flatness_lut values may be specified such that the values are smaller for larger luma values. In some cases, a LUT design may be advantageous because quantization artifacts may be more difficult to see in brighter image regions (e.g., larger luma values) than in darker image regions (e.g., smaller luma values).

In some implementations, a flatness measure may be a function indicative of the flatness of a set of previously coded pixels or samples. For example, a flatness measure may be a SAD of components from a set of previously coded samples with respect to the average of the values of the samples of the set. For example, a flatness measure may comprise two or more SADs corresponding to different sets of samples. For example,

 avg 1= (P(0,−1)+P(0,0)+P(0,1)+P(0,2)+2)>>2  SAD_1 = abs(P(0,−1)−avg1) + abs(P(0,0)−avg1) + abs(P(0,1 )− avg1) + abs(P(0,2)−avg 1)  avg2= (P(0,−2)+P(0,−1)+P(1,−2)+P(1,−1)+2)>>2  SAD_1 = abs(P(0,−2)−avg2) + abs(P(0,−1)−avg2) + abs(P(1,−2)− avg2) + abs(P(1,−1)−avg2)

In some cases, a flatness measure may be based on the maximum of SAD_1 and SAD_2, the minimum of SAD_1 and SAD_2, or another function.

In some implementations, if the flatness measure is below a pre-determined threshold value for an examined group of pixels, a group of pixels that is due to be assigned the next QP value may be deemed to be flat. If a group is deemed to be flat, the rate control may modify the QP value for the group with respect to a default QP value. For example, the modified QP value may be set to MinQP, which may be associated with the applicable buffer fullness range, a predetermined value may be subtracted from the default QP value to form the modified QP value, the modified QP value may be set to a predetermined value, or other changes from the default QP may be made. In some cases, the value of a pre-determined threshold, which may be used for comparison with a flatness measure, may be based on the current QP value, on a buffer model fullness range, or other parameter.

In some implementations, coding may utilize slices. A slice may be defined such that the slice can be decoded independently of other slices. In some cases, at the first line of a slice, the reconstructed values of the preceding line may not be available. When coding or decoding the first line of a slice, an explicit indication may be provided in the bit stream to indicate the QP value for the group of pixels being coded. In various implementations, such an indication may be coded as a uniquely decodable set of bits. For example, an escape code, a bit associated with a uniquely decodable set of bits, a bit, and/or other indication may be used.

In some cases, an escape code may be implemented to indicate the use of ICH coding, reduced QP, or both. For example, an escape code may be followed by two bits, one that indicates the use of indexed color cache and the other that indicates a reduced QP value.

In some implementations, a syntax that enables the indication of a modified QP value may have a different definition at the first line of a slice compared to the syntax that applies to non-first lines of a slice. In one example, a syntax bit may be present in the bits used to code a first line and not present in the bits used to code non-first lines. In an example, for the first line of a slice, a two-bit escape code may be used to indicate the use of an ICH and a reduced QP, and for the non-first lines, the escape code may not be present. In one example, a uniquely decodable set of bits may be present for the first line and not present for the non-first lines.

In some implementations, a QP value may be expressly indicated within a bit stream and may apply to one group of pixels. For subsequent groups of pixels, a rate controller (e.g., rate controller 208) may adjust the QP value. For example, when the QP value is reduced for a first group of pixels in response to an indication, the rate controller may adjust the QP value to be consistent with another parameter for other groups. For example, the parameter may include a MinQP value, a measure of activity of at least one the previously coded groups, or other parameter. A resulting QP value that applies to at least one subsequent group of pixels may differ from the QP value that would have applied if the reduced QP value had not been indicated for the first group of pixels.

In some implementations, the modifications to QP values indicated in the bit stream may apply to a single group of pixels. For subsequent groups of pixels, the rate controller may adjust the QP value to a value that would have applied if a reduced QP value had not been indicated for the aforementioned single group of pixels.

In various implementations, a coding architecture may use an adjustment to QP values based on a flatness measure of previously coded pixels and an adjustment to QP values based on an indication present in a bit stream. A coding architecture may implement an indication in a bit stream for setting QP for first lines of slices and a flatness measure of previously coded pixels for non-first lines of slices.

In some implementations, it may be advantageous to define circumstances under which a flatness indication or reduced QP indication is defined in a bit stream syntax. In some cases, this may allow for a reduction or minimization of the number of bits in a bit stream used to code an image or a slice. In cases where an indication is defined not to exist in the syntax, bit stream coding may use fewer bits, e.g., the bits that would have been used for the indication may be omitted. Accordingly, a flatness indication may not be sent, and space in the bit-stream is not reserved to send the flatness indication. For example, a group of pixels may be coded using a set of units, which may be defined according to DSU-VLC. The trailing bit of the prefix portions of units may be truncated the under certain conditions. In some cases, these conditions may include situations where the predicted size of a unit equals the bits per component value minus the quantization divisor value. In some cases, an escape code value may be used. The use of an escape code may imply the use of the trailing bit in the prefix value where the trailing bit would be otherwise unnecessary.

In some implementations, a flatness-indicating syntax element may be available for alternating groups of pixels, once per 3 groups of pixels, or some other number of groups of pixels.

In various implementations, a flatness-indicating syntax element may be available only if the current QP is within a predetermined range of values.

In some implementations, a flatness-indicating syntax element may be available if the buffer model fullness of transformed buffer model fullness is within a predetermined range of values, or if a determined fullness range is currently selected by the rate controller.

In some cases, a decoder may make an initial determination as to whether a flatness condition applies to a group of pixels. Additionally or alternatively, the encoder may include a syntactical indication of the correctness of an initial determination of flatness for certain groups of pixels. For example, the syntactical indication may specify whether the initial determination is correct and/or whether determination applies to the current group of pixels. The encoder and decoder may make the same initial determination, using the same values of previously coded pixels. The encoder may determine the correctness of the decoder's initial determination based on the encoder's similar initial determination and/or on the encoder's examination of the input pixels. If an initial determination is indicated to be not correct, the initial determination may be ignored, or alternatively a different value of the determination may be used to over-ride the initial determination.

FIG. 25 shows an example decoder system 2500 for adjusting quantization. The bit stream input is provided to a rate buffer 2510. From the rate buffer 2510, the stream is provided to a variable length coding (VLC) entropy decoding block 2512. The output of the VLC entropy decoding block 2512 is provided to the inverse quantization in mapping block 2514. The output from the inverse quantization and mapping block 2514 is provided to a MAP and block prediction unit 2516. From the MAP and block prediction unit 2516, an image output is produced. A rate control unit 2522 provides data to the rate control block 2522. The rate control block 2522 determines a quantization parameter value to be provided to the inverse quantization and mapping block 2514. The ICH 2520 stores a set of sample values that can be directly referenced using a specific coding syntax. In some implementations, the content of the ICH may be reviewed to determine consistency among the indices in the ICH. In some implementations, the consistency may be used in flatness prediction. For example, if an entry is selected repeatedly then the material is likely to be flat.

The flatness determination block 2524 may be in communication with the MAP and block prediction unit 2516 to receive reconstructed pixels. Further, the flatness determination block 2524 may be in communication with a line buffer 2518 to receive previously reconstructed pixels. The flatness determination block 2524 may determine the flatness of a portion of the image based on the reconstructed pixels, the previously reconstructed pixels, and/or any combination of both. In addition, a flatness determination block 2524 may determine a quantization parameter adjustment to be provided to the rate control block 2522, as described elsewhere within this application. The quantization parameter adjustment provided to the rate control block 2522 may be determined based on the reconstructed pixels, the previously reconstructed pixels or a combination of both.

In some implementations, the VLC entropy decoding block 2512 may provide an indication to the flatness determination block 2524 indicating that a certain portion of the image is flat. The indication may indicate that the image transitions from non-flat to flat, as well as the location where the transition occurs. The indication may be extracted by a VLC decoding block 2512 from the bit stream provided by the encoder. As described above, the encoder may have more information available to determine the flatness of the image and, further, how the quantization parameters should be adjusted based on the flatness of the image.

In some implementations, the decoder may determine flatness based on reconstructed pixels. FIG. 26 shows example pixel values 2600 available for a decoder to determine flatness. The flatness at pixel location X0 may, for example, be determined in the decoder only by pixels earlier in the scan order. For example, in a raster scanning system, pixels to the left of pixel X0 or in the line above pixel X0 may be available. However, in some embodiments, an encoder can have access to the entire image including pixels to the right of location X0 and/or pixels on lines below X0.

In some implementations, the encoder may make a detailed analysis of flatness to compare with a cursory analysis. For example, the detailed analysis of flatness may be compared with an anticipated determination of flatness calculated at the decoder based on the reconstructed pixels. If, via the detailed analysis, the encoder determines that the decoder will improperly determine the flatness for one or more groups, the encoder may provide an indication determined groups of pixels should be identified as flat and that the QP should be adjusted accordingly. As previously described, the indication may include the identifications of non-flat to flat transitions, and/or the locations of the transitions. Additionally or alternatively, the indication may include the QP adjustment that should be applied by the decoder.

FIG. 27 shows an example encoder system 2700 for adjusting quantization. The input image is provided to the MAP and block prediction unit 2710. The output of the MAP and block prediction unit 2710 is provided to the quantization and mapping block 2712. The output of the quantization of mapping block 2712 is provided to the VLC entropy coding unit 2714. The output of the VLC entropy coding unit 2714 may be provided to a rate buffer 2716. The output of the rate buffer 2716 may be the bit stream output. The input image may also be provided to a cache 2720 and a buffer 2726. The rate control block 2722 may be in communication with the quantization and mapping unit 2712 to receive rate control information. The rate control block 2722 may also provide a quantization parameter to the quantization and mapping unit 2712 for coding the input image. The ICH 2720 stores a set of sample values that can be directly referenced using a specific coding syntax.

The encoder 2700 may include a first flatness determination block 2728 and a second flatness determination block 2724. The first flatness determination block 2728 may utilize an implicit flatness determination algorithm that is similar to such an algorithm implemented on the decoder. As such, the first flatness determination block 2728 receives reconstructed pixels values from the quantization and mapping block 2712 and previous reconstructed pixel values from the line buffer 2718. As such, the first flatness determination block 2728 may make a flatness determination based on reconstructed pixels.

Additionally or alternatively, the encoder 2700 may include a second flatness determination block 2724. The second flatness block may rely on input values and/or reconstructed pixel values. In some implementations, use of input values may generate a more detailed and/or accurate flatness prediction. In an example, the second flatness determination block may receive reconstructed pixel values from the quantization and mapping block 2712 and previously reconstructed pixel values from the line buffer 2718. Further, the image input may be stored in the buffer 2726, such that the second flatness determination block 2724 may use pixel information for pixels that are later in the scan order than the current pixel whose flatness is being determined. The second flatness determination block 2724 may use pixel information for pixels that are earlier in the scan order than the current pixel whose flatness is being determined. It may use pixel information for the current pixel. Alternatively the second flatness determination block 2724 may not receive reconstructed pixel values. For example, for a raster scanning system, pixels to the right or below the current pixel, as well as any other pixels may be used. The second flatness determination block 2724 may, therefore, create a more detailed or more accurate flatness determination than the first flatness determination block 2728.

The first flatness determination block 2728 may be used to anticipate the flatness determination that will occur at the decoder. As such, the second flatness determination block 2724 may generate an indication, if the more detailed flatness determination from the second flatness determination block 2724 does not agree with the flatness determination from the first flatness determination block 2728. In response, the second flatness determination block 2724 may provide an indication to the VLC entropy coding unit 2714 to encode the indication within the bit stream output.

The indication may be divided into one or more parts. For example, the indication may be divided into two parts. One part may be a coarse indication of the location of a non-flat to flat transition. For example, the coarse indication may identify that a non-flat to flat transition occurs within a specific set of groups of pixels, such as, some number of recently analyzed groups. In some implementations, an indicated transition may include a future event with respect to the scan order. A second part may be a fine indication of the location. For example, the fine indication may identify which group within the specific set of groups includes a non-flat to flat transition. Various numbers of pixels or groups may be defined such that multiple layers of granularity may be provided to communicate a non-flat to flat transition location. In some cases, the granularity may allow for the location to be communicated using a minimum number of transmitted bits. In some implementations, the second part may be dependent on the first part. As such, a particular fine indication may be transmitted responsive to a coarse indication that a non-flat to flat transition has occurred.

FIG. 28 shows example logic 2800 for generating an indication based on image flatness. The logic 2800, which may be disposed partially or entirely on an encoder, may use one or more algorithms for determining flatness within an image. In a decoder, information from already decoded pixels may be available for a flatness measurement. In some cases, an encoder may have values available that correspond to pixels before and/or after the current pixel in the scan order. As such, the encoder may determine a first flatness measurement according to a first flatness algorithm (2812). The first flatness algorithm may be the same algorithm implemented in a corresponding decoder. As such, the encoder may anticipate the flatness measurement that will be determined by the decoder.

The encoder may, further, determine a second flatness measurement according to a second flatness algorithm (2814). In some implementations, the second flatness algorithm may provide a more detailed and/or accurate analysis than the first flatness algorithm. The second flatness algorithm may use information from pixels both before and after the current pixel in the scan order. Information from pixels may refer to input pixels. The encoder may compare the first flatness measurement to the second flatness measurement (2816). Through this comparison, the encoder can determine if the first flatness measurement (which may be less detailed or less accurate) agrees with the second flatness measurement (which may be more detailed or more accurate). If the first and second flatness measurements agree, the encoder may determine whether the decoder will correctly adjust the quantization value based on its flatness measurement. When agreement is found, the encoder may proceed to encode the values (2820). However, if the first and second flatness measurements do not agree, the encoder may generate an indication to indicate the flatness or a change in flatness or a quantization parameter or change of quantization parameter to the decoder (2822). The encoder may then encode the indication in the output stream for use by the decoder (2820).

Fine-Grained Bit-Rate Control

FIG. 29 shows an example architecture 3100 in which a source 3150 communicates with a sink 3152 through a communication link 3154. The source 3150 or sink 3152 may be present in any device that manipulates image data, such as a DVD or Blu-ray player, a smartphone, a tablet computer, or any other device. The source 3150 may include an encoder 3104 that maintains a virtual buffer 3114. The sink 3152 may include a decoder 3106, memory 3108, and display 3110. The encoder 3104 receives source data 3112 (e.g., source image data) and may maintain the virtual buffer 3114 of predetermined capacity to model or simulate a physical buffer that temporarily stores compressed output data. The encoder 3104 may also evaluate the encoded symbols for transmission at a predetermined bit rate. The bit rate may correspond to an approximation of the rate at which the source may pass data to the sink over the communication link. The encoder 3104 may specify the bit rate, as just two examples, in units of bits per pixel, or in units of bits per unit of time. In various implementations, the bit rate may be a non-integer number of bits per pixel. For example, the specified non-integer bit rate may include an integer number of bits 7, 8, 10, 13, or other integer and a fractional number ¼, 5/16, 37/64, ⅞, or other fraction to form a non-integer value. The virtual buffer 3114 may model the transmission at the non-integer bit rate. This may allow the example architecture 3100 to better match its actual bit rate to a desired bit rate, e.g., fine-grained bit rate control (FGBRC). For example, the desired bit rate may be selected to correspond to an available resource. For example, the communication link 3154 may be able to support a non-integer bit rate.

The example architecture 3100 for image data manipulation is one context for discussion of FGBRC. However, FGBRC may be applied in other contexts. For example, FGBRC may be used in audio compression, scientific data sampling compression, data storage, or other context where compression with a specified bit rate is applied. Additionally or alternatively, the specified bit rate may be used for communications rates or for bit stream verification purposes, or any other reason, in any of the devices noted above, or other devices.

The encoder 3104 may determine the bit rate, for example, by maintaining a cumulative count of the number of bits that are used for encoding minus the number of bits that are output. While the encoder 3104 may use a virtual buffer 3114 to model the buffering of data prior to transmission of the encoded data 3116 to the sink 3152, the predetermined capacity of the virtual buffer and the output bit rate do not necessarily have to be equal to the actual capacity of any buffer in the encoder or the actual output bit rate. Further, the encoder 3104 may adjust a quantization step for encoding responsive to the fullness or emptiness of the virtual buffer 3114. An exemplary encoder 3104 and operation of the encoder 3104 are described below.

The decoder 3106 may obtain the encoded data 3116 from the memory 3108. Further, the decoder 3106 may determine the predetermined virtual buffer capacity and bit rate, and may determine the quantization step that the encoder 3104 employed for encoding the encoded data 3116. As the decoder 3106 decodes the encoded data 3116, the decoder 3106 may also determine the fullness or emptiness of the virtual buffer 3120 and adjust the quantization step used for decoding. That is, the decoder 3106 may track the operation of the encoder 3104 and determine the quantization step that the encoder 3104 used. The decoder 3106 decodes the encoded data 3116 and provides video data 3118 to a display 3110. In some implementations, the quantization step may not be present in the encoded data 3116. Examples of decoders 3106 and encoders 3104, and their operation are described below.

The memory 3107, 3108 may be implemented as Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), Dynamic RAM (DRAM), a solid state drive (SSD), hard disk, or other type of memory. The communication link 3154 may be a wireless or wired connection, or combinations of wired and wireless connections. The encoder 3104, decoder 3106, memory 3108, and display 3110 may all be present in a single device (e.g., a smartphone). Alternatively, any subset of the encoder 3104, decoder 3106, memory 3108, and display 3110 may be present in a given device. For example, a Blu-ray player may include the encoder 3106 and memory 3108, and the display 3110 may be a separate display in communication with the Blu-ray player.

FIG. 30 shows an example of a video encoder 3200. The video encoder 3200 encodes the video data 3202. The video data 3202 may take the form of a series of successive frames 3202-0, . . . , 3202-x, for example. The frames 3202-0, . . . , 3202-x may take the form of 2-dimensional matrices of pixel components, which may be represented in any color space such as the Red/Green/Blue (RGB), YUV, Luminance Y/Chroma Blue Cb/Chroma Red Cr (YCbCr), Luminance Y/Chroma Orange/Chroma Green (YCoCg), Alpha, Red, Green, Blue (ARGB), or other color space. Each of the pixel components may correspond to a spatial location. While the matrices may be overlaid to form a picture, each of the pixel components in the matrices are not necessarily co-located with pixel components in other matrices.

Each pixel component may be encoded with a value comprising a predetermined number of bits, such as 8, 10, 12 or other number of bits per pixel component. The encoding may employ, as examples, 10 bit YCbCr 4:2:2, 8 bit YCbCr 4:2:2, 10 bit YCbCr 4:4:4, 8 bit YCbCr 4:4:4, 8 bit ARGB 32, or 8 bit RGB 24 encoding. The video encoder 3200 may receive the pixel components of the frames in raster scan order: left to right, top to bottom. In certain implementations, the video encoder 3200 may receive the pixel components at a predetermined rate. The predetermined rate may correspond to the real-time frames per second display rate.

The video encoder 3200 may include an input, predictor & quantizer 3204, a mapping and variable length coder (VLC) 3206, rate controller 3208, and a rate buffer 3210. The video encoder 3200 receives and encodes the pixel components. While the number of bits representing pixel components coming into the video encoder 3200 may be constant (per pixel component), the number of bits representing each coded pixel may vary dramatically. The video encoder 3200 may increase the number of bits representing coded pixels by reducing the quantization step, or decrease the number of bits by increasing the quantization step. In some embodiments the compressed output of the encoder is conveyed to a memory (e.g. DRAM) 3212. In some embodiments the compressed output of the encoder is conveyed via a communications link to another device.

The input, predictor & quantizer 3204 predicts and quantizes the pixel components, resulting in quantized residuals. In certain implementations, the input, predictor, & quantizer 3204 may predict a pixel component from previously encoded and reconstructed pixel components in the same frame, e.g., 3202-0. The mapper and variable length coder 3206 codes the quantized residuals, resulting in coded bits.

The input, predictor & quantizer 3204 may use a predetermined initial quantization step for quantizing a predetermined amount of data, such as video pixel data. The mapping and variable length coder 3206 signals the rate controller 3208, which in turn instructs the input, predictor & quantizer 3204 to increment, decrement, or leave unchanged the quantization parameter, as will be described in more detail below.

The mapping and variable length coder 3206 may code the quantized sample values using their natural 2's complement binary values. The number of bits that the mapping and variable length coder 3206 uses to code each value may be determined dynamically by a combination of a recent history of coded values of the same pixel component and a prefix value associated with each unit of samples.

The rate controller 3208 determines whether to increment, decrement, or leave unchanged the quantization step. The rate controller 3208 may perform the quantization step analysis, e.g., by simulating or modeling a buffer of predetermined capacity. For example in the model, bits enter the buffer model as they are coded, and bits are removed from the buffer model at a specified number of bits each unit of time. A unit of time may be a pixel time. The specified number of bits may vary from one unit of time to another. The modeled buffer may be referred to as a virtual buffer. If the virtual buffer is becoming full, the rate controller 3208 may increase or increment the quantization step. If the virtual buffer is becoming empty, the rate controller 3208 may decrease or decrement the quantization step.

The rate controller 3208 may determine the fullness of the virtual buffer by, e.g., counting the bits that are used to encode the input received over a given number of input samples and removing bits. Bits enter the buffer model as they are coded, and bits are removed from the buffer model at a specified number of bits per unit of time. A unit of time may be a pixel time. The specified number of bits may vary from one unit of time to another. The number of input samples may be as few as one sample.

A decoder may start decoding with an initial quantization step. As the decoder decodes the encoded data, the decoder may also determine the fullness of the virtual buffer. The decoder may determine the fullness or emptiness by observing the amount of bits that were used to encode an amount of decoded data corresponding to the number of input samples.

FIG. 31 shows an example of a virtual buffer 3300. The virtual buffer 3300 is in communication with a bitstream source 3302, the rate controller 3208, and a bitstream consumer 3306. The virtual buffer 3300 models the behavior of a rate buffer where the output bit rate may vary over time. The output bit rate may be specified to comprise a non-integer or fractional portion of the bit rate. For example, a bit rate may be specified as 10.75 bits per pixel or per pixel time, where 0.75 is the fractional portion of the bit rate. The specified bit rate may be in units of bits per pixel, bits per pixel time, bits per unit of pixels or bits per the time of a unit of pixels, or it may be in other units such as bits per unit of time, such as bits per second. The bitstream consumer 3306 may model the consumption of bits. The bitstream source 3302 may be the output of the mapper and variable length coder 3206, for example. A unit of pixels may comprise a predetermined number of pixels, for example two, three, four, or some other number.

Bits enter the virtual buffer 3300 when they are created. For example, the number of bits used to code a unit is added to the virtual buffer 3300 when the unit is coded. Bits leave the virtual buffer 3300 according to a schedule. For example, the schedule may specify a constant or variable number of bits per unit. The virtual buffer 3300 may be implemented as a buffer accumulator 3308, in which one value is added and another value is subtracted per unit. The value that is subtracted per unit may vary from one unit to another unit. The value is that is subtracted per unit may comprise a fractional portion. Alternatively, the schedule of removing bits from the virtual buffer 3300 may be in units of bits per second. Alternatively, the times at which bits are added to or subtracted from the virtual buffer 3300 may be finer or coarser than a unit, and may use a construct other than a unit, such as a sample, a macroblock, a slice or a picture. In order to model the behavior of a First In First Out (FIFO) buffer, the fullness of the virtual buffer 3300 may be clamped to 0 when subtracting a number of bits from the fullness that would otherwise result in a negative value of fullness.

When the output bit rate used in the virtual buffer 3300 is less than or equal to the actual bit rate at which bits are removed from the rate buffer in an encoder, and the rate controller 3304 ensures that the virtual buffer 3300 does not overflow, the rate buffer also does not overflow. In various embodiments, the memory buffer may include physical memory such as a FIFO buffer or other component. In some implementations, to ensure that the rate buffer does not overflow, the virtual buffer 3300 may be smaller than that rate buffer. The bit rate at which bits leave the virtual buffer model can be changed at any time to any supported value. If the actual rate at which bits leave the rate buffer equals or approximates the rate at which bits leave the virtual buffer model, the encoder's bit rate can be set to any supported bit rate with effectively instantaneous response. Because the rate control uses the virtual buffer model to manage the rate of creation of bits, the rate control function does not need to monitor the rate at which bits leave the rate buffer.

The rate control may depend on the activity, measured by the sizes of the samples, of the previous unit, as well as fullness of the virtual buffer model, and a measure of the strength of an edge, if any, in the preceding samples. The rate control may use several configurable thresholds. Units, e.g., of pixels, may be organized into Groups 310. Groups 310 may be utilized to organize the samples to facilitate the buffer model and rate control. In another exemplary implementation, the decoder does not perform the same rate control decisions as the encoder, and the encoder transmits bits which indicate at least a portion of the quantization control.

In one implementation, the encoder, including the rate controller 208, ensures that the virtual buffer 3300 does not exceed a defined maximum fullness, while choosing quantization levels to maximize overall subjective image quality. For some images and bit rates, both may be achieved relatively easily, while for others, the buffer fullness may vary and approach or reach the size of the virtual buffer 3300 at times and the quantization may vary and may reach the maximum allowed value at times.

The virtual buffer 3300 may represent a FIFO of predetermined size, BufferSize. The value of BufferSize may be chosen according to the particular application. A larger size generally facilitates better compression for a given bit rate and image contents, and vice versa. A larger size also implies a larger amount of space available in a physical rate buffer, as well as potentially increased latency. In an exemplary implementation, at the start of a picture, the virtual buffer 3300 is initialized to be empty. Alternatively, the virtual buffer 3300 fullness may be retained from one picture to the next, or it may be initialized to some other value, or initialized at other events for example at the start of a slice.

In one embodiment, as each Group 3310 of samples is encoded, the number of bits used to code the Group 3310 is added to the buffer accumulator in the virtual buffer 3300. After each Group 3310 is coded, a number equal to the budget of bits per Group 3310, e.g., the specified bit rate, is subtracted from the buffer accumulator, with the result clamped to 0 to enforce non-negative fullness. In example implementations where the decoder mimics the rate control of the encoder, the same operation happens in the decoder: as each Group 3310 is decoded, the number of bits that the Group 3310 occupies is added to the model and the specified bit rate, e.g., the budget number of bits per Group 3310, is subtracted, with the result clamped to 0. This way the encoder and decoder buffer models track exactly for every Group 3310 in each picture. The rate controller 3208 can guarantee that the buffer fullness never exceeds the defined maximum value, e.g., the buffer size, by adjusting the value of Quant.

In one implementation, at the start of each picture, the quantization value Quant is initialized to 0, corresponding to lossless coding. In another implementation, the value of Quant is initialized to a non-zero value. The value of Quant may be adjusted dynamically to avoid overflowing the buffer model while maximizing the compressed image quality. The rate control algorithm may facilitate encoding of difficult images at low bit rates with minimum visible quantization errors, as well as encoding difficult images at higher bit rates with no visible quantization error. The value of Quant may be adjusted dynamically to avoid underflowing the buffer model.

In one implementation, the activity level of each Group 3310 is measured. The activity level may be the maximum quantized residual size of each Unit in the Group 3310, times the number of samples in a Unit (e.g., 2, 3, or 4), plus 1 (corresponding to a prefix value of 0), summed over all of the units in the Group 3310. The quantized residual sizes are after quantization using the current value of Quant. As an example of 2 samples per unit and 3 units per Group 3310, the numbers of bits for sample 0 and 1 are SampleSize[0] and SampleSize[1] respectively. Assume the maximum size of the two samples for unit 0 is MaxSizeUnit[0]=MAX(SampleSize[0], SampleSize[1]), then the activity level for the Group 310 is RcSizeGroup=MaxSizeUnit[0]+1+MaxSizeUnit[1]+1+MaxSizeUnit[2]+1. Another parameter that calculates the real number of bits coded in the last Group 3310, e.g., BitsCodedCur, in example shown below, is also used in determining whether the value of Quant should be increased, decreased, or left unchanged.

The following describes control of the quantization parameter, Quant, for an example where the virtual buffer size is 16 Kbits. In this example, “MaxBitsPerGroup” represents the pre-determined data rate in bits per Group 3310. Offset[ ] is a set of values that adjust the “target_activity_level” according to the fullness of the buffer model, which is represented by “Buffer_fullness”, and which is compared to various threshold values represented by BufTh1, BufTh2, and so on:

// Set target number of bits per Group according to buffer fullness if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh1) {  Target_activity_level = MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[0];  MIN_QP = minQP[0];  MAX_QP = maxQP[0]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh2) {  Target_activity_level = MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[1];  MIN_QP = minQP[1];  MAX_QP = maxQP[1]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh3) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[2]));  MIN_QP = minQP[2];  MAX_QP = maxQP[2]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh4) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[3] ));  MIN_QP = minQP[3];  MAX_QP = maxQP[3]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh5) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[4] ));  MIN_QP = minQP[4];  MAX_QP = maxQP[4]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh6) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[5]));  MIN_QP = minQP[5];  MAX_QP = maxQP[5]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh7) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[6]));  MIN_QP = minQP[6];  MAX_QP = maxQP[6]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh8) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[7]));  MIN_QP = minQP[7];  MAX_QP = maxQP[7]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh9) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[8]));  MIN_QP = minQP[8];  MAX_QP = maxQP[8]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh10) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[9]));  MIN_QP = minQP[9];  MAX_QP = maxQP[9]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh11) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[10]));  MIN_QP = minQP[10];  MAX_QP = maxQP[10]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh12) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[11]));  MIN_QP = minQP[11];  MAX_QP = maxQP[12]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh13) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[12]));  MIN_QP = minQP[12];  MAX_QP = maxQP[12]; } else if(Buffer_fullness < BufTh14) {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[13]));  MIN_QP = minQP[13];  MAX_QP = maxQP[13]; } else {  Target_activity_level = max(0, (MaxBitsPerGroup + offset[14]));  MIN_QP = minQP[14];  MAX_QP = maxQP[14]; }

The 14 values of threshold (BufTh1 through 14) of buffer fullness in units of bits may be set for a virtual buffer model size of 16 Kbits (16,384 bits) as {1792, 3584, 5376, 7168, 8960, 10752, 12544, 13440, 14336, 15232, 15456, 15680, 15960, 16240}. The 15 values of offsets (offset[0 to 14]) for Target_activity_level may be set as {20, 10, 0, −2, −4, −4, −8, −10, −10, −10, −10, −12, −12, −12, −12}.

At any range of buffer fullness, which is bounded by two consecutive thresholds, e.g., BufTh1<=Buffer_fullness<BufTh2, there is a range of Quant, specified by MIN_QP and MAX_QP, allowed for the rate controller 3208 to use. This helps to regulate the variation of Quant to avoid over-quantization when the buffer level is low, as well as avoiding the use of too many less significant bits that may not help with visual quality when the buffer fullness is high. The pair of parameters, MIN_QP and MAX_QP, associated with each range of buffer fullness levels are selected respectively from an array of 15 values of minQP[0 to 14], with example default values of {0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17}, and an array of 15 values of maxQP[0 to 14] with example default values of {2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17}, according to the buffer fullness level.

The value of Quant is adjusted according to the measured activity levels, the target activity level, the allowed Quant range specified by MIN_QP and MAX_QP, and the strength of a strong edge. When there is a strong edge, the activity level normally increases significantly if the value of Quant stays fixed. The rate control algorithm detects the presence of a strong edge by examining the activity level of the current Group 3310 and that of the preceding Group 3310 as well as the associated values of Quant. When a strong edge is detected, the rate control algorithm does not increase the value of Quant immediately after the presence of the strong edge, in order to avoid potential quantization noise that is more readily visible in smooth areas that may follow a strong edge. This factor may be observed for example in some cartoon content. The rate control may increase the value of Quant at the second Group 3310 after a strong edge. One parameter that serves as a threshold in detecting strong edges is defined as EdgeFactor in the pseudo code below.

Some implementations avoid excessive fluctuation of Quant around a high quantization value, which could result in visible high frequency quantization noise in some images. These implementations regulate the increase of Quant so that Quant does not increase for two consecutive Groups of pixels when the value of Quant is already high, with certain exceptions. However, the decrease of Quant may be allowed as soon as the measured activity level is low. These adjustments are controlled by two parameters defined as QuantIncrLimit[0] and QuantIncrLimit[1] in the example below; their default values may be set to 11. In the following example, RcSizeGroup represents the activity level, BitsCodedCur represents the actual number of bits used to code the most recently coded Group 3310, and RcTgtBitsGroup represents the Target_activity_level. RcTgtBitOffset[0] and RcTgtBitOffset[1] are offset values that adjust the range of the target activity level. EdgeFactor is a parameter that is used to detect a strong edge. The quantization step of the last Group is Quant, which is saved as QuantPrev before it is assigned the value for the current Group.

The operation of the Quant adjustment may be implemented as follows:

if ( RcSizeGroup < (RcTgtBitsGroup − RcTgtBitOffset[0])  && BitsCodedCur < (RcTgtBitsGroup − RcTgtBitOffset[0])) {  QuantPrev = Quant;    Quant = MAX(MIN_QP, (Quant−1)); } else if (BitsCodedCur > RcTgtBitsGroup + RcTgtBitOffset[1]) {  if ((QuantPrev == Quant && RcSizeGroup * 2 < RcSizeGroupPrev * EdgeFactor) || (QuantPrev < Quant && RcSizeGroup < RcSizeGroupPrev * EdgeFactor && Quant < QuantIncrLimit[0]) || (Quant < QuantIncrLimit[1] ) )    {  QuantPrev = Quant;      Quant = MIN(MAX_QP, (Quant+1));} } else QuantPrev = Quant;

When the buffer fullness approaches the maximum allowed level, the above Quant value determined by the activity level may be replaced by max_QP:

if (Buffer_fullness >= BufTh_overflow_avoid)  *Quant = max_QP;

Where BufTh_overflow_avoid is a programmable parameter.

In some implementations, an encoder (e.g., 3104, 3200) or decoder (e.g., 3106), may implement FGBRC to establish more precise bit rates. For example, a communication channel may be able to carry compressed video data at a rate of 10.25 bits/pixel. For a device that implements an integer bit rate setting, a rate of 10.0 bits/pixel may be the highest bit rate compatible with the example communication channel. Devices implementing FGBRC may implement non-integer bit rate settings. For example, for a FGBRC device, a bit rate of 10.25 bits, 10.125 bits or other bit rate may be selected. Devices able to set their bit rate to more closely match the capacity of a communication link may allow for improved video and audio quality, less overhead (e.g., packet stuffing) at the transport layer, and other benefits.

In some implementations, the bit rate may correspond to an effective bit rate of the communication link. For example, the communication link may be bursty or otherwise time variant. The effective bit rate of the time-variant communication link may correspond to a non-integer values. However, in various implementations, the effective bit rate of the communication link may be a constant (e.g., time invariant) non-integer value.

As will be described in more detail below, the control may be implemented for lost cost and at low complexity. In one implementation, one additional adder is employed. As a result, the control may be orders of magnitude less expensive that, for example, implementing control using time stamps. At the same time, the control may provide arbitrarily fine grained precision for producing a specified bit rate. Almost any number of fractional bits may be used. The granularity of bits per unit is: 1/(2^(number of fractional bits), or 1/2^(n) where n is the number of fractional bits.

Additionally or alternatively, fractional portions may be handled via other computational forms. For example, the fractional bit rate may be stored as a floating point number. Floating point arithmetic may be applied to track the fractional bits.

FIG. 32 shows example logic 3400 for FGBRC. A video encoder or decoder may implement the logic 3400 in hardware, software, or both, to perform FGBRC. The logic 3400 specifies a bit rate applicable to an identified source of bits (3402), e.g., encoders 3104, 3200. According to the logic 3400, the number of bits (e.g., stored, transmitted, received, or otherwise processed) per unit is specified (3404) via a number that has a fractional component, e.g., the number has some number of bits representing a fractional quantity (e.g., a value less than one but greater than zero). Fractional bits may be written to the right of a binary point or decimal point. The logic 3400 may operate to remove integer numbers of bits from the fullness of the buffer model (e.g., the fullness of virtual buffer 3114, 3300). In some cases, the buffer model fullness may be specified in integer numbers of bits. In some cases, the modeling of integer numbers of bits by the buffer model may allow for simplification of operations performed using the buffer model (e.g., the virtual buffer 3114, 3300). For example, as discussed above Quant may be determined based on the buffer model fullness.

Note that a unit may be virtually any unit of data. In one implementation, it may be a pixel of video, or a set of two or more pixels. For example, in various implementations, pixel sets of 100 or more may be specified as a unit. For purposes of rate control, a unit may be a unit of time. A unit of time may have a specified relationship to a time interval associated with a pixel. An encoder implementing FGBRC may have a buffer model, e.g., the virtual buffer 3114, but some implementations may lack a buffer model.

The logic 3400 may choose the number of fractional bits according to any desired degree of granularity of bits per unit (bpu) to be used in fractional processing. For example, for a granularity of 1/256 bpu, the bpu variable may have eight (8) fractional bits plus as many integer bits as are needed to represent the integer portion of bpu (e.g., 4 bits to represent an integer portion up to 16). The number of fractional bits may specify the resolution of the logic 3400. In some cases, a granularity may be used to specify a bit rate involving any multiple of the granularity. For example, a granularity of ⅛ (3 bits) may be selected for buffer modeling for a bit rate of 10.375 bits/unit (10⅜).

The logic 3400, for each unit, reduces the buffer model fullness by a rate integer portion of the fractional bit rate (3406). For example, the logic 3400 may subtract bits from the virtual buffer (e.g., 3114, 3300) fullness corresponding to the integer part of the bit rate. The logic 3400 also reduces the buffer model fullness by an integer portion that results from accumulating the rate fractional portion to the accumulated fractional portion from previous units (3408). For example, the logic 3400 may subtract bits from the virtual buffer (e.g., 3114, 3300) fullness corresponding to the accumulated integer value. The logic 3400 also keeps any remaining fractional portion in a rate accumulator as a residual for use in transmitting/receiving/storing/retrieving data for subsequent units (3410). The logic 3400, for example, sums the remaining fractional values at the rate accumulator and subtracts the integer portion of the sum from the virtual buffer fullness.

FIG. 33 shows example fractional bit rate logic 3500. For the example fractional bit rate logic 3500, assume an application specifies a bpu with 4 fractional bits, e.g., a granularity of 1/16 of a bit. The example fractional bit rate logic 3500 may then include an adder 3502 that is the width of the bpu value including the fraction. For example, assume also that the maximum bpu that may be specified is greater than 16 and less than 32. Then, the bits 3504 used to specify the integer portion of the bit rate may be 5 bits and the bits 3506 used to specify the fractional portion may be 4 bits for a total of 9 bits.

The fractional bit rate logic 3500 has assigned two pixels per unit. The controls 3508 of the example fractional bit rate logic 3500 may implement the following ‘C’ pseudo code:

Input parameter: BitsPerUnit // total number of bits per unit, including integer bits and fractional bits Constant: FractionalBits = 4 // binary point is to the left of the four bits Mask = 0x000F // mask to keep the 4 fractional bits Initialize: Rate_Accumulator = 0 Every Unit: Rate_Accumulator += BitsPerUnit BitsToSend = Rate_Accumulator >> FractionalBits //shift right by the number of fractional bits Rate_Accumulator = Rate_Accumulator & Mask // mask off the integer bits, keep the fractional bits // alternatively, Rate_Accumulator −= BitsToSend<<FractionalBits BufferFullness −= BitsToSend

In some cases the alternative code may be less efficient to implement. In the pseudo code above, the BitsToSend parameter represents the number of bits to process. As examples, this may be the number of bits removed from the bit buffer or buffer model to send or process. Or, when the application is saving or storing data, this may be the number of bits expected to be received and stored. The BufferFullness parameter represents the number of bits left in the bit buffer.

In some cases, the bit rate (e.g., fractional or integer) may vary dynamically. For example, the communication link 3154 may be bursty and the encoder 3104 may monitor the average data rate of the communication link 3154. The average data rate of the communication link 3154 may vary over time. The encoder 3104 may vary the bit rate dynamically to account for the changing condition of the communication link 154.

FIG. 34 shows example logic 3600 for FGBRC. For the example logic 3600, the bit rate begins at 24.125 bits per unit (e.g., for a unit of three pixels) and then is increased to 32.75 bits per unit.

For the first unit, 24.125 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 24 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.125 bits (3602). For the second unit, 24.250 bits are to be handled, e.g., 24.125 bits for the unit and the 0.125 bits from the rate accumulator. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 24 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.250 bits (3604). For the third unit, 24.375 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 24 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.375 bits (3606). For the fourth unit, 24.5 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 24 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.5 bits (3608). For the fifth unit, 24.625 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 24 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.625 bits (3610). For the sixth unit, 24.75 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 24 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.75 bits (3612). For the seventh unit, 24.875 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 24 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.875 bits (3614). For the eighth unit, 25 bits are to be handled and the rate accumulator may hold 0 bits. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 25 bits, which corresponds to 24 integer bits from the unit and 1 accumulated bit from the rate accumulator (3616).

The logic 3600 may respond to a received instruction to increase the bit rate to 32.75 bpu (3618). For example, the instruction may be sent in response to a detected change in condition of the communication link, a change in desired video quality, or other bandwidth change. In some cases, the logic 3600 may change the number of bits used to specify the fractional portion of the bit rate. In the example, the logic 3600 may reduce the number of significant fractional bits from 3 (for ⅛ bit granularity) to 2 (for ¼ bit granularity). For the ninth unit, 32.75 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 32 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.75 bits (3620). For the tenth unit, 33.5 bits are to be handled, e.g., 32.75 bits for the unit and the 0.75 bits from the rate accumulator. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 33 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.5 bits (3622). For the eleventh unit, 33.25 bits are to be handled, e.g., 32.75 bits for the unit and 0.5 bits from the rate accumulator. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 33 bits and the rate accumulator may hold 0.25 bits (3624). For the twelfth unit, 33 bits are to be handled. The logic 3600 may reduce the buffer fullness by 33 bits (3626).

Additionally or alternatively, the buffer fullness of the buffer model (e.g., virtual buffer 3114, 3300) may specify fractional portions of bits. For example, the buffer fullness may include fractional bits or may be specified as a floating point number. The fractional bit rate may then be removed directly from the buffer fullness, which may result in non-integer buffer fullness values. Operations on the buffer fullness, such as those discussed above with respect to virtual buffer 3300, may be executed by using fractional bits, a processor including a floating point unit (FPU), or other logic for handling non-integer values. In some cases, the non-integer portion of the buffer fullness may be a small portion of the total buffer fullness. For example, for a 16 Kbit buffer, the maximum portion of the buffer that may be specified by the fractional bits may itself be a small fraction of 1 percent of the buffer.

Accordingly, the fractional portion of the buffer fullness may be used when modeling the buffer fullness for a fractional bit rate and ignored (e.g., dropped via truncating, or other operation) during other calculations. For example, a mask may be implemented to drop bits specifying non-integer portions of the buffer fullness when determining Quant.

In various implementations, the buffer accumulator 3308 and/or the rate accumulators implemented in example logic 3400, 3500, and/or 3600 may be implemented at software, hardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, the accumulators may be implemented as memory registers, bit values, floating points, integers, or other computational entities.

Adjustment Bits

In some implementations, a slice multiplexing scheme may be constrained to use chunks that are multiples of 1 byte (e.g., 8 bits) in size. In some cases, up to 8 bits may be added to a chunk.

In some cases the bits may be padded. For example, stuffing bits may be appended to a chunk. In some cases, performing a bit shift to achieve the bit padding may be associated with hardware resource consumption. In some cases, adjustment bits may be used in place of stuffing bits to ensure byte-multiple chunks.

In some implementations, adjustment bits may be included in the budget for bits per group. This may require that the adjustment bits for padding the chunk are present in the rate buffer when the bits for the groups are inserted. In an example, a parameter setting, which may be called forceMpp, may be used to ensure the adjustment bits are available in the encoder rate buffer. In some cases, the picture quality may be improved by including the adjustment bits in the budget when compared to schemes relying on bit stuffing. In various implementations, adjustment bits may be used to pad for other size bit groupings (such as, 4 bit nibbles, 2-byte multiples, 4-byte multiples or other boundaries).

FIG. 35 shows example logic 3700 for including adjustment bits within the budget. The codedGroupSize 3702 is an output from a VLC capable of entropy encoding and/or entropy decoding that indicates the number of bits that were used to code the previous group. The bitsPerGroup 3704 is the number of bits allocated for a group to achieve the budget, which may vary from group to group. The following pseudocode may be used to determine the bits allocated for a pixel group, bitsPerGroup:

for (i=0; i<pixelsInGroup; ++i) {  pixelCount++;  if(pixelCount >= initial_xmit_delay)  {   bpgFracAccum += bits_per_pixel & 0xf; // 4 fractional bits   bitsPerGroup += floor(bits_per_pixel) + (bpgFracAccum >> 4);   numBitsChunk += floor(bits_per_pixel) + (bpgFracAccum >> 4);   bpgFracAccum &= 0xf;  }  if(((pixelCount − initial_xmit_delay) % slice_width) == 0)   bpgFracAccum = 0; } where the pixelsInGroup is the number of pixels in the current coded group, numBitsChunk is a running count of the number of bits that have been generated for the current chunk, and pixelCount is a running total of the number of pixels processed. In an example case, the pixelsInGroup value may be 3. In some cases, partial groups may be processed, in which case the pixelsInGroup equals the number of pixels in the partial group. In some cases, groups of pixels larger (or much larger) or smaller than 3 pixels may be processed by the logic 3700.

In some cases, the adjustmentBits 3710 value may be 0 for non-last groups in a chunk and non-zero for the last group of a chunk. The value of the adjustmentBits 3710 for the last group of a chunk may correspond to the number of bits that will result in the chunk having a byte-multiple number of total bits. In some implementations, the slice multiplexing framer 3712 may determine the value of adjustmentBits 3710 for each line. The slice multiplexing framer 3712 may track the number of bits that have been removed for the individual slice lines. In some implementations, the following pseudocode may be implemented on the slice multiplexing framer to track the removed bits:

if(pixelsInGroup + chunkPixelTimes >= slice_width) {  pixelsRemaining = sliceWidth − chunkPixelTimes;  modBpgFracAccum = prevBpgFracAccum + (pixelsRemaining * bits_per_pixel) & 0xf;  modBitsPerGroup = floor(pixelsRemaining * bits_per_pixel + (modBpgFracAccum >> 4));  if(vbr_enable) {  vbrChunkSize = ceil((prevNumBitsChunk + modBitsPerGroup − bitsClamped) / 8);  adjustmentBits = 8 * vbrChunkSize − (prevNumBitsChunk + modBitsPerGroup − bitsClamped);  } else  adjustmentBits = 8 * chunk_size − (prevNumBitsChunk + modBitsPerGroup);  numBitsChunk = prevNumBitsChunk − 8 * chunk_size; } else  adjustmentBits = 0; where chunkPixelTimes is a counter that counts the number of pixel times that have accumulated for the current chunk. The count may be determined by summing the over pixelsInGroup for the processed groups. PrevBpgFracAccum and prevNumBitsChunk are the values of bpgFracAccum and numBitsChunk for the previously processed group.

For byte-multiple implementations, the value of adjustmentBits 3710 may be between 0 and 8, inclusive, and may correspond to the number of bits added to ensure the chunk is byte-aligned. In some implementations, in CBR mode, the value for adjustmentBits may or may not be the same for multiple slice lines. The value of bpgFracAccum may be reset after processing a slice line in CBR mode.

In some cases, if VBR is disabled, the bit stuffing detection function 3716 may determine if the next group could potentially cause an underflow condition (e.g., a bufferFullness 3718 that is less than zero). If an underflow condition is possible, forceMpp 3720 is set to 1, which may cause the VLC to implement an MPP mode or other controlled bit-stuffing mode. In some cases, an MPP mode may enforce a minimum bit rate. In some implementations, the bit stuffing detection function 3716 may determine forceMpp 3720 using the following pseudocode:

forceMpp = (pixelCount > initial_xmit_delay) && (bufferFullness < maxBitsPerGroup − 3); where maxBitsPerGroup is equal to ceil(bits_per_pixel*3), where “ceil” is the ceiling function. In various implementations, other ceiling function inputs may be used. For example, other multiples of bits_per_pixel or other values may be used. In some cases, the value of forceMpp 3720 applies the second to last group and/or last group of a chunk. The following pseudocode may be used to determine if forceMpp 3720 may be applied:

if(numBitsChunk + maxBitsPerGroup + 8 > 8 * chunk_size)  forceMpp = (pixelCount > initial_xmit_delay) && (bufferFullness − 8 < maxBitsPerGroup − 3);

This determination may ensure there are enough bits in the encoder buffer to output the padding bits and generate a byte-multiple chunk.

In some implementations, if VBR is enabled, the bufferFullness 3718 may be clamped such that it has a value of 0 or greater in cases where the final modified value would be less than 0. The following pseudocode may be used to clamp the bufferFullness 3718:

if(bufferFullness < 0) {  bitsClamped += −bufferFullness;  bufferFullness = 0; }

The cumulative number of adjustment bits added to the end of chunks in a slice may be stored as bitsClamped 3722. BitsClamped 3722 may be used to determine the actual chunk size. When VBR mode is used, it may be uncommon to assert forceMpp 3720, but the forceMpp 3720 output may asserted on a group prior to another group that implements adjustment bits when applying the condition set for above for CBR mode. The forceMpp may be asserted in this case to ensure that the encoder rate buffer has enough bits remaining to allow the chunk to end on a byte boundary.

The methods, devices, and logic described above may be implemented in many different ways in many different combinations of hardware, software or both hardware and software. For example, all or parts of the system may include circuitry in a controller, a microprocessor, or an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or may be implemented with discrete logic or components, or a combination of other types of analog or digital circuitry, combined on a single integrated circuit or distributed among multiple integrated circuits. All or part of the logic described above may be implemented as instructions for execution by a processor, controller, or other processing device and may be stored in a tangible or non-transitory machine-readable or computer-readable medium such as flash memory, random access memory (RAM) or read only memory (ROM), erasable programmable read only memory (EPROM) or other machine-readable medium such as a compact disc read only memory (CDROM), or magnetic or optical disk. Thus, a product, such as a computer program product, may include a storage medium and computer readable instructions stored on the medium, which when executed in an endpoint, computer system, or other device, cause the device to perform operations according to any of the description above.

The processing capability of the system may be distributed among multiple system components, such as among multiple processors and memories, optionally including multiple distributed processing systems. Parameters, databases, and other data structures may be separately stored and managed, may be incorporated into a single memory or database, may be logically and physically organized in many different ways, and may implemented in many ways, including data structures such as linked lists, hash tables, or implicit storage mechanisms. Programs may be parts (e.g., subroutines) of a single program, separate programs, distributed across several memories and processors, or implemented in many different ways, such as in a library, such as a shared library (e.g., a dynamic link library (DLL)). The DLL, for example, may store code that performs any of the system processing described above.

Various implementations have been specifically described. However, many other implementations are also possible. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method implemented by an encoding device, the method comprising: determining a fractional bit rate comprising a rate integer portion corresponding to an integer bit rate and a rate fractional portion corresponding to a non-integer bit rate; accumulating the rate fractional portion of an input stream in a buffer; determining when accumulating the rate fractional portion of the input stream results in an accumulated integer portion; and reducing a buffer fullness associated with encoding the input stream by the rate integer portion and the accumulated integer portion.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: accumulating a second fractional portion; and combining the rate fractional portion and second fractional portion to generate the accumulated integer portion.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the fractional bit rate comprises determining a number of bits for a unit.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein the determining the number of bits for the unit comprises determining a number of pixels for the unit.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising increasing a bit budget by one or more adjustment bits to facilitate aligning an end of a bitstream chunk to a byte boundary.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein reducing the buffer fullness by the rate integer portion comprises subtracting the rate integer portion from the accumulated integer portion.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein: the buffer fullness comprises a virtual buffer fullness; and the method further comprises modeling content of a memory buffer.
 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising increasing the virtual buffer fullness by a third integer portion responsive to the encoding device adding data to the memory buffer.
 9. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining a quantization parameter based at least in part on the buffer fullness.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the fractional bit rate comprises determining an effective data rate for a communication link that transfers data out of a memory buffer.
 11. The method of claim 10, wherein determining the effective data rate comprises determining an average data rate of the communication link.
 12. The method of claim 10, further comprising adjusting the fractional bit rate responsive to a change in a condition of the communication link.
 13. The method of claim 1, wherein the buffer comprises a rate accumulator and the method further comprises setting a granularity of the fractional bit rate in inverse powers of two by selecting a number of significant fractional bits for the rate accumulator.
 14. The method of claim 13, wherein accumulating the rate fractional portion comprises setting one or more of the significant fractional bits of the rate accumulator.
 15. An encoding system, comprising: a memory buffer configured to store data; fractional rate circuity coupled to the memory buffer, the fractional rate circuitry configured to: determine a fractional bit rate comprising a rate integer portion and a rate fractional portion, wherein the fractional bit rate comprises a fractional number of bits per unit time corresponding to a constant rate channel; accumulate the rate fractional portion; determine when accumulating the rate fractional portion results in an accumulated integer portion; and reduce a buffer fullness for the memory buffer by the rate integer portion and the accumulated integer portion.
 16. The encoding system of claim 15, where: the system further comprises a communication interface configured to establish a communication link that transfers data out of the memory buffer; and fractional rate circuity is further configured to determine the fractional bit rate by determining an effective data rate for the communication link.
 17. A method implemented by an encoding device, the method comprising: based on a data stream from a source, determining a fractional bit rate for the data stream, the fractional bit rate comprising a rate integer portion and a rate fractional portion that comprises a fractional value; increasing virtual buffer fullness to represent data being added to a memory buffer; reducing the virtual buffer fullness by the rate integer portion and the rate fractional portion of the fractional bit rate to model removal of the data from the memory buffer; accumulating the data stream at the rate fractional portion of the fractional bit rate; determining when accumulating the data stream at the rate fractional portion results in an accumulated integer portion; and responsive to the accumulated integer portion, reducing the virtual buffer fullness by the accumulated integer portion.
 18. The method of claim 17, further comprising: determining an effective data rate for the data stream based on a communication link configured to transport the data stream; and based on the effective data rate for the data stream, determining the fractional bit rate.
 19. The method of claim 17, further comprising setting a granularity of the fractional bit rate in inverse powers of two by selecting a number of significant fractional bits for a rate accumulator. 